The fun of reorganizing a PC

Charles Bradshaw

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Some time ago, I got Poser 4 (3D CGI), and decided to dedicated one of my three 60 GB hdds. So I had to remove Mandrake Linux to do this. Well, I found that I am not using as much hard disk space as I thought I would be.

The fun part is resizing, moving, copying, and deleting partitions, without destroying their contents or order. This does take quite a while to do, and I have Windows partitions (drives) C - J.

Step 1: figuring out just how much space you can prune.
Step 2: deciding where you want the partitions.
Step 3: go through the process, which takes hours to do.
Step 4: final step, which is creating the the Linux partitions.

I was able to free almost half of my total hdd space for Linux. Now to install Mandrake Linux Powerpack Edition 8.2, then successively upgrade to 9.0 and 9.1 (15 CDs, total).

I use Partition Commander and System Commander Personal Edition.

Now I have to save up for bigger hard disks. It will take less time to install Linux (all 3 versions), than it took to reorganize my hard disks.

Anyone else go through this sort of fun?? /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif
 

CNC Dan

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sure, but I just do it for fun.

I use Partition Magic and have C D E drives.

C I use for the OS.
D I use for apps.
F I use for files.

I can backup just the 'drive' I want, so I doesn't take as long, and when I want to de-frag, that goes quickly too.

I do sometimes need to "move space" from the F drive to the D drive.
 

Eugene

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Did the same myself recently. Have a 20G in the laptop and a 20G external drive. Moved everything off on the external drive and burned a bunch of stuff I haven't used in a while on cd. Finally made a Linux partition and copied my data over. Kept shrinking the windows partition and expanding the linux one. I now have a 4G windows and the rest linux. Won't be much longer and the windows partition will just disappear.
 

LukeK

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I've been running XP for a while and now I really want to setup Dual boot (mandrake and XP). I've downloaded the .isos and tomorrow I'm gonna install it on a 6 GB partition I set aside. I'm hoping everything will go smoothly and that it will allow me to choose which partition I want the way it should.
 

raggie33

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i did some partion resizeing earlier got it all done to install that new Fedora Project/Red Hat Linux and a course one of the cd was fubared i didnt do a crc check
 

binky

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I was going to. In order to load RH9 and move yet more of my partion away from Windows and into Linux-land. But after careful review of the above it reminds me of the project size. Maybe I'll hold off. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif
 

Charles Bradshaw

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I have 4 Linux Partitions:

/ (root) 4 Gigs
/usr (user) this is the big one for installs. 14.4 Gigs
/home this is where individual users accounts have their data and personal programs. 60 Gigs

linux swap (special swap partition) - required

I know that Mandrake 8.2 can have a maximum / size of 6 Gigs, and must be at the beginning of the drive, UNLESS, you do a separate /boot, which goes at the beginning of the drive.

Luke, notebook installs are hairy, to say the least. I buy my packs, as it supports my distro of choice. When I got interested in Linux, I took my time and did some research, before jumping in. As a result, I knew ahead of time, where the probable trouble areas would be (hardware). 6 Gigs is kind of small, but for trying it out, it is fine.

It will take time for you to get used to it: / instead of \ among other things. Don't install what you don't need to conserve space.

Note: if you have an ISP that uses a prioprietary dialer and/or interface (usually windows only), or, uses an OS sniffer (MSN), you will have problems getting online.

I had one experience with Partition Magic (version 3), and it was a POS.

When I upgrade my hdds, I will have lots of fun. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif

Once you get linux installed and running, it is alot of fun.
 

Al_Havemann

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You might consider using Vmware, it's really a package for tech's and take dedication to master and to install all the various OS's into VM's, but it certainly is versatile. It works so well that I was able to install XP into a Virtual Machine (VM), then activate the XP installation. Now I can copy the activated XP/VM to any other machine that has Vmware installed and use the XP/VM on that machine and XP is completely unaware of the difference. If you do that though, be aware that any app you've installed on the VM has to be available on the host or it won't work. If you have tons of disk space and don't use all that many apps, you can install the apps into the VM instead which would make the VM, including apps, truly portable between machines.

Another thing about using a VM is that you can optionally set it to be "persistent" or "non-persistent". If it's persistent, all changes made during a session are saved. If it non-persistent, any changes will be discarded after shutdown of the VM. That means that if you install an OS into a VM, set it for non-persistent, then trash it, experiment on it or do whatever. When you blow it away, shut down and restart and the OS is back to life just as installed, all that you did to destroy it is gone.

Feed it a worm, virus or Trojan and see what happens, then just restart the OS and it back to normal. Great fun!. We're considering the purchase of a VMware site license just so we can run the user desktop as a non-persistent VM. No more support - if something goes wrong, just restart and it's back to virgin. No more rusty opersting systems needing a reload, etc. Even the host is a blow in job with Norton Ghost.

I use a 3.1ghz Dell with 12gb of ram and 2x200gb disks in a raid. The best combo I've found is a single partition. When I start XP, I don't start the GUI (the desktop) by setting the boot loader GUI flag to 0. Once the system boots it loads VMWARE 4.0 (that's all that is running except task manager). From VMware I can select the OS I want to use.

I have Virtual Machines set up for:

XP Pro
Win2k Server
Win98
WinME
RedHat Linux 7.2
Novell Netware 4.11
Novell Netware 6.3
Novell Netware 7 beta (Linux Kernel)

All of these take up about 14gb on disk. Each has access to the host volume so the installation of programs, files, etc don't take up any additional space in the VM Virtual Disks. I can load at least three VM's at once without taking a performance hit unless I'm using Novell as one of the OS's, Novell hits the processor hard. With any of the others everything runs fine.

I also have the same setup on a 2.4ghz laptop (Dell) with a 60gb disk. With the XP host on the laptop not loading the GUI, there's really little overhead involved and I can start up any two OS's at the same time and switch between them. The limit of two OS's running at the same time is because the laptop doesn't support more than 2gb of ram.

This gives me access to any operating system at any time, which would seem pretty silly except that I am responsible for a large law office with a mixed environment. Not in the office proper, which is all Win2k, but in the attorney's home computers which are a mixed bag of various flavors of Windows, Linux and Mac. Since I don't have a photographic memory I need to be able to start just about any OS at a moments notice for support purposes. I would support Macs if I could load the Mac OS into a VM.

All this works like a champ. I can be working in XP, and load Win98 or Linux while running a Novell file server on the same workstation, at the same time.

Al
 

Eugene

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I'm using vmware too. Run XP under vmware under linux. I have had in the past almost every version of windows, redhat, suse, slackware, mandrake, solaris x86. I had to delete a few as I ran out of hdd space so I'm selling a lot of crap on ebay to get $ for a bigger hdd.
 

MichiganMan

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Al, I can see the need to run Win98 ('tho I haven't encountered anything that wouldn't run on my beloved Win2k for a good three years now) but why then do you also have ME, the most nototrious mistep since MS Bob?
 

LukeK

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I just burned the Mandrake Iso's onto cd. I'm about to back everything up and start the installation process. I could expand that partition to 10-20 GB if I need to (which I think I will). Although I doubt Linux and a few basic programs will take more than 8 GB or so at the very most. I've got plenty of space to use so that's definitely not a problem.
 

Eugene

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I had to have screen shots of each OS to write up some docs for the company, things like installing the vpn client. After that I deleted all the windows vm's. I kept my w2k servers as I had a duplicate of my companies production environment, web app and db layer. I told them my workstation was the DR plan /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif
 

Charles Bradshaw

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Win4lin is fine for some things. I have version 4, which has no directX or Direct Video support. Version 5 has DirectX (software calls only) support. Version 4 is more limited to productivity apps. VMWare costs like $400-500, and that is more than one month's fixed income here.

LukeK, you need the linux swap partition, and at least one regular linux partition.

My problem, if you will, in switching completely to linux, is that I have some games that I like to play occasionally, and some of those use DirectX (not sure if they do software calls or direct to hardware). I also have Windows only software that I like, which does run under win4lin.

Here is what I am currently thinking: If I can get most of my favorite apps to run under win4lin version 4, I may just build a second system, just for the things that won't, and that one won't be connected to the internet. Then I will dump win98se as a native boot, and have linux as my primary OS, with no fat32 partitions at all. (This sounds better, the more I think about it.) /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif

Darn upgrade bugs bites just as hard as the flashlight bug! /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/rolleyes.gif /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif
 

was_jlh

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I always use Partition Magic, never failed me yet. The lion's share of space on my laptop is devoted to MDK 9.1, the rest to XP. On the desktop, it's split evenly between the two.

Charles, just curious, instead of loading 8.2 and upgrading, why not just load 9.1?

Luke, if you're gonna be new to Mandrake, you will definitely want to check out TexStar's site once you get up and running, single best MDK site, IMHO -
www.pclinuxonline.com

Joe
 

Eugene

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You can get an adademic version of vmware for around 100 If you are or know someone who is a student (my wife is). Also you can sometimes pick up an old version for under 100 and then buy the upgrade for around 100.
Win98SE? Man I loaded that on my laptop a couple years ago. It didn't last untill the evening, it was the slowest buggiest OS I have ever seen .I couldn't even load all my software as the registry hit the limit. I switched back to NT4 and ran it untill Windows 2000.
 

Charles Bradshaw

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Joe, the reason I do it this way, is that I have a Mandrake RPM from 8.1 Powerpack, which is not included with 8.2 and up.I have to install it before upgrading, as the libraries are not included in release 9+. I found out when I the hard way on this one. When I do it this way, I don't lose the app when I upgrade.

I just got Mandrake 8.2 Powerpack installed and am using it at the moment. Initial install done. 2 upgrades to go.

I notice that Mandrake has an AMD64 version in the works: DROOL!

Eugene, my win98se native is 100 percent stable. This is due to stable hardware. I haven't had a BSOD since I got all of my hardware stable. I don't know anyone who is a student, so academic versions of anything are out of the question.

Oh, I just saw the Dell Linux Cluster in the Datacenter commercial on TV. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif

Reorganizing hard disks can be alot of fun. If I decide to build a secondary PC for my games, the I get to do this all over again (or upgrade my hdds). /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif
 

was_jlh

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Thanks, Charles, I see.

Yeah, the Ath64 ver should be nice.

Seen the new IBM Linux commercial yet? I've been looking for it but haven't seen it.
 

Eugene

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My hardware was stable too. It was an out of the box Compaq Armada laptop. The problem I had with 98 was the registry limit. Once I installed Office, visio, blah, blah, blah, The 93 registry filled up. When I installed the same under NT4 the registry filled up so I just went in the control panel and set the size higher. I also had to get rid of 95 due to adobe. The acrobat OCR would crash and the whole system would go down with it, nt4 the ocr would crash and I would just restart adobe and try again. Adobe did imporve it with acrobat 5 but I still had a few documents that could crash it.
 

Charles Bradshaw

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New one? Guess not. It will be a long time before I can afford an Athlon64 + mobo + etc., if ever. I have a hard enough time finding uses for my current computer.

Internet: mostly CPF.
an occasional game
occasional use of lotus word pro 97
Sometime use of Solar Fire 5 Professional Astrology software.

In other words, not much usage at all.
 
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