5.2.1 hangs solved and now find a way to split the ntfs hard drive.

[Murray Taylor]

On Thu, 2004-09-16 at 08:10, Richard Lynch wrote:
> Choy Kho Yee wrote:
> > On 2004/09/15, at 12:58, esmaeel pashapouri wrote:
> >
> >> Now as in subject line, have to figure a way to split
> >> the hard drive which short sitedly by the hp was
> >> patitioned in  1 big chunk and formated in ntfs
> >> format.
> >> According to freebsd docs I am out of lock for now,
> >> unless to use comercial programs.
> >> If any one know of any other way i'll be glad to hear
> >> from them.
> >
> > I heard that some linux live-cds have the utility to resize NTFS
> > partitions on them.
> > I can't provide further information as I have never used them before.
> > Perhaps you could check them out.
> 
> A quick Google yields these two:
> http://www.sysresccd.org/
> http://overclockix.octeams.com
> 
> I have used the first one.  It worked.  It was awesome.
> 
> One thing though:  BE PATIENT!!!
> 
> While it's trying to re-size the partition, it sits there for a LONG time
> doing "nothing" at the end of the process, and your mouse and keyboard are
> frozen.
> 
> Do *NOT* re-boot.  *WAIT*.
> 
> BE PATIENT.
> 
> It will *eventually* finish, and you'll be happy.  If you re-boot in the
> middle of it re-partitioning, you will not be happy.
> 
> Pre-requisite:
> You'll want to defrag the drive under windows first.
> 
> You should be able to poke around in the Control Panel/Admin/System areas
> and get a visual display of where Windows has all its files.
> 
> You want to see a big chunk of white space on the right hand side, with
> NOTHING but white on the right.
> 
> Sometimes Windows put "hidden" "un-movable" files at the end of the disk. 
> You have to go into DOS and change their attributes and get them moved by
> defrag before you can re-partition.

Sysrescue is very good .. I used it to partition my IBM A30 laptop
and all worked as advertised.

It boots from the CD into gentoo linux and gives a list of options ..
choose ntfsresize and work through.

You can fiddle about with the size 'balance' as much as you like,
nothing happens until you commit the resizing.

And then _wait_

It does seem to do nothing for long enough to suggest that it has
died ..... but it hasnt, and it does work ( I did two machines,
an A30P with 40 G HDD and the A30 with a 20G HDD. ) 
Both survived the experience and are running Winblows (at work)
and FreeBSD/KDE at home.

The hardest bit is to figure out which files windows has marked hidden
or system and which _DONT DEFRAG_ (Arggghh)

It took me 4 hours and a couple of shareware tools to properly 
clear up the high disk area ...... . .#$%#^&% *%*%& .
The ntftresize then took about 10 minutes and the FReeBSD install took
about 40 minutes.

NB Windows will want to reboot a couple of times after installing
FreeBSD and / or the partitioning as the silly thing seems
to think that you have added  / changed devices or some such
nonsense. Once you get past that, the OS (FreeBSD) and the 
toy (Windows 2000) co-exist quite peacefully.

And mount_ntfs works fine too (RTFM man mount_ntfs for caveats)

mjt

-- 
Murray Taylor
Special Projects Engineer
---------------------------------
Bytecraft Systems & Entertainment
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