Partitioning my hard-drive
 

What software do I need to do this?

Re: Partitioning my hard-drive
 

Any Operating System you buy should have a partitioning tool included.

If you want a more comfortable and powerful partitioning program then "Partition Magic" from powerquest or "Acronis disk director suite" could be used.

I cant reach the acronis.com site currently, but the german site offers a download version for testing and to buy a download version online (in case you need it now and not in 2006) here http://www.acronis.de/homecomputing/.../diskdirector/

You could also download a linux CD and use those partitioning tools for free.

ps: http://www.acronis.com/homecomputing.../diskdirector/ the english version

Re: Partitioning my hard-drive
 

So the linux CD's have the software for partitioning with them?
What I've done is d/led the 64bit version of suse (5 cd's), and I wanted to make a partition to put it on. I've got no experience doing this kind of thing, so any advice would be appreciated.

Re: Partitioning my hard-drive
 

I dont know anything of real use for partitioning but I can give some obvious advice and say BACKUP everything of importance to CD:)

Also if you have some spare cash, maybe its worth looking into buying an external harddrive? Or even a second internal one.

Re: Partitioning my hard-drive
 

Since I'm doing this on a laptop, a second internal HD isn't possible, and I don't have spare cash, hence partitioning the one i've already got.

Re: Partitioning my hard-drive
 

i know linux has fdisk for setting up partions

Re: Partitioning my hard-drive
 

fdisk is a windows thing too but theres tons of programs you can use.
qparted is a decent linux one also. or partition magic for windows
just do a google search, you'll come up with hundreds - some better then others

Re: Partitioning my hard-drive
 

or, if you dont want to partition your hd for linux, run it in a virtual machine - in something like vmware.
laptops and linux dont usually mix 100% though. acpi, wireless, graphics ( if ati chipset ) can be nasty to set up

Re: Partitioning my hard-drive
 

Ok, I should explain that I'm a complete noob and don't have a clue what I want in a bit of software (other than something that is easy to use) or even why I have to set up a partition to dual boot, hence asking here. Do any of you know of a nice, clear step by step guide to this kind of thing or anything?

Re: Partitioning my hard-drive
 

If you have a hard disk with an existing system installed on it and you want to keep it, you likely need to resize the existing partition(s) first to make some space on your hard disk. For Linux a software called FIPS does that, but it isnt foolproof. For Windows the software i mentioned in my first posting both do that with an easy to use graphical user interface.

If you have partitions installed on your hard disk but dont need them anymore, you need to erase them first before repartitioning for/with linux. You can do that from within the SUSE tools through the manual setup.

If you have enough free disk space to just add the SUSE installation or the hard disk doesnt contain any partitions yet, you can use the automatic installation from SUSE. Those automatic installations usually have one major problem - they assume they can use the hard disk fully for themselves. So if you afterwards want to install another system on the same hard disk, you need to resize and possibly move existing partitions.

If you want to have both windows and linux easily selectable on your laptop, install windows first and then install linux. The default installation of SUSE will create a bootmenu via GRUB in the MBR and you can conveniently select your OS during booting.

Most importantly - if you have any data on your hard disk you dont want to lose during installation - back it up in advance.

The suse documentation with a setup howto is here: http://www.novell.com/documentation/suse10/
Setup->Installation with YaST->1.8 Installation settings

Re: Partitioning my hard-drive
 

Does the free trial version of the software you reccomended actually allow me to do anything though?

[EDIT]It would appear that, upon trying, the free version doesn't actually do anything, so whilst it is very pretty and easy to use, it doesn't really help me much as I don't want to spend $60 on the damn thing[/EDIT]

Re: Partitioning my hard-drive
 

Just follow the SUSE installation manual if you want to do it without spending money.

Re: Partitioning my hard-drive
 

Ok, so I tried to follow the suse install guide, but it seems to get an error when trying to srink the windows partition down to 45gig, dispite the fact that its only using 35gig, why would this happen? (I think the error was error code 3045)

Re: Partitioning my hard-drive
 

From section 1.8 of the manual:

Yast is likely using FIPS (code) to resize the partition. FIPS never fully supported NTFS just like other linux drivers or tools never did.

Re: Partitioning my hard-drive
 

Use ubuntu rather than Suse. It's meant to be very good with laptops (compared with other 'flavours') and was very simple to set up on my desktop.
The partitioning bit of the install process should be more than enough.

Re: Partitioning my hard-drive
 

I may make the move over to ubuntu later, the main reason for choosing suse is that i've played with it before and that someone on my floor has used it, so when things inevitably go wrong they can help me out.
Whilst I'm asking questions, which is better, KDE or Gnome?

Re: Partitioning my hard-drive
 

Any change between different linux distros because of this problem would be totally pointless because none of them develops their own filesystem tools and the problem here is the NTFS filesystem support from FIPS and other linux soft. It has nothing to do with the partitioning itself.

Re: Partitioning my hard-drive
 

Thats a religious question ;)

In the past it has been true that KDE needed more resources (cpu/memory) then Gnome, so if your computer has trouble running KDE it may run Gnome fine.

IMHO KDE is the mainstream way now since more distros use it as default desktop.

Re: Partitioning my hard-drive
 

ok, since it is now apparent I need to do the partitioning in windows, how do I do that (I hear that it can be done as standard in XP, but as I have repeatedly said, I have no real clue what I'm doing.)

Re: Partitioning my hard-drive
 

If your problem is the resizing of the windows XP partition:

Both should solve your resizing problem so you can proceed with the partitioning using the Suse tools.

Re: Partitioning my hard-drive
 

and both have the unfortunate problem of costing money :s.

Re: Partitioning my hard-drive
 

I know :(

It is likely something you can only avoid with luck, criminal energy or quite some time spend. The best free resizer is FIPS but thats the one the linux installations use, you may be lucky to find an older version of some resizing tool for cheap money on a magazine CD (happens from time to time in germany) but older versions might have problems resizing current NTFS partitions (depends on the software installed on your partition) so you may even risk your data.

Time consuming "free" methods would be backing up your data and re-installing your WindowsXP into a smaller partition. As an alternative you may be able to do an image backup (acronis trueimage, powerquest driveimage) and restore it into a smaller partition but that once again would lead to the same problems (nonfree software, older versions possibly having problems with current NTFS partitions, spending a lot time to do it and risking your data).

Oh and if you are lucky, you could just try the swap-disable trick mentioned in the Suse manual and have FIPS shrink the partition further.

Apart from that there are some dirty tricks to go around the partition resizing or re-installation but as you are not that experienced in partitioning, i dont even want to mention them ;)

Re: Partitioning my hard-drive
 

So since this is obviously a dead end, I have decided to lose windows entirely, so its time for another question:
If I use WINE (or similar program, please tell me what program) can I play all my windows games on a linux distro?

Re: Partitioning my hard-drive
 

No matter which of the different windows (game) emulations you use, you wont be able to run _all_ windows games.

Cedega/WineX seem to be the major windows game compatibility suites - http://www.transgaming.com/ and check http://transgaming.org/gamesdb/

I would always keep a windows installation for gaming and for viewing some types of media.