creating a partition for win98?

[tony draper]

Been building a new computer, had a few conflict probs, and had to format and reload windows a couple of times.
I see people talking about creating a separate partition for windows, that can be formated without losing the rest of the stuff on the Hard Disk.
How do you go about this ?,and what size partition should I create?.:confused:

[BDiONU]

Use the FDISK command in a similar manner to how you FORMAT. It is quite user friendly and will allow you to make as many partitions of different (or the same) sizes as you want.
How big a partition? How big is your HDD? Mine is only 3Gb so I have it in 2 halves, one for Windoze and other sorts of Apps, the other for documents and my own stuff. Really it depends on how much you want to give, but you probably need at least 200Mb.

HTH

[tony draper]

The disk is a 15 gig IBM deskstar,I have used fdisk on occasion, on new H/D's.
I just don't recal fdisk giving you a option of creating more than on partition, basicly I want windows on its own patritian and the rest of the disks for my progs.
Just formated reloaded windows ,then spent hours downloading ie6, directx8, and various large patches, the windows instal wasn't up to snuff and I had to refomat the disk, thus lost hours of downloads.
Will give it a try.
ps, would one gig of space be enugh for windows 98?.

[FL310]

Give it 2GB so that you can have the swap file also on this partition.

I have checked W98 with a requirement of 780 MB
and Win2K with 1.3 GB

[GeneralElectric]

Hi Tony

You'll like this one:

http://www.fdisk.com/

Lots of info.

The only problem with having a partition with only the Windows folder (ie not your programs) is that many programs load dll's and vxd's into your windows folder. Not to mention the registry which is stored in there too.

So if you reinstall Windows you'll have to either backup your registry first, or setup all your programs from scratch again.

Cheers

[somewhatconcerned]

Drapes. One gig is pleanty for win 98, leaves room for office suite and continues to work fine and dandy.
As far as fdisk goes, I have been told by one far more knowlageable than myself that it is way to create a partition but it will erase your hard drive (tried and tested). His words 'think of fdisk as f**k disk'.
From vague memory you should get the partition option one or two steps after typing the fdisk command in dos.

[Cornish Jack]

Mr D
FDISK will certainly do what you want but it is not the most intuitive program to use. Additionally, you will have to 'wipe' everything which is already on your H/D before you can set up the new partition.
The easy answer is to obtain a copy of Partition Magic. This will let you set up whatever partitions you wish and at any size (within the H/D size limits :) ). It does it 'on the fly' and does not lose any of your original set-up. You can also use it to move programs and/or data from partition to partition - all WYSIWYG and easy to use. The multi-partition option is well worth the effort.

[Richard Spandit]

Format the lot and install Linux...

But seriously for a moment...

I have a 26GB HDD and it is split in the following manner:

Windows 98 - 8GB
Shared partition (FAT32) - 5GB (because Windows won't natively read a Linux ext2 partition)
Linux - 13GB

I use Gnu Parted which is free and will allow you to resize existing partitions without the need for reformatting. I basically have Windows on a Primary partition, the shared space on another, and the Linux stuff in an extended partition (Linux traditionally needs about 3 partitions, /boot; /swap and /)

Ignore all this and install Linux... I use SuSE 7.2

RS

[Alvin]

R Spandit

Welcome back, long time no hear from you (on the forum)

You seem to know what you are talking about, but I am afraid you are not ze bescht.

Regards

Alvin