[GLLUG] Partitions

[Marr]

On Wednesday 22 January 2003 06:14pm, Sean wrote:
> On 21 Jan 2003, Bruce Smith wrote:
> > On Tuesday 21 January 2003 02:16pm, Marr wrote:
> > > FWIW, I have successfully used FIPS
> > > (http://www.igd.fhg.de/~aschaefe/fips/) to perform a non-destructive
> > > split of a friend's Windows XP machine's 1-partition NTFS hard disk
> > > drive to add 2 partitions ...
> >
> > Are you SURE the partition was NTFS and not FAT32 ?
> >
> > I can't find anything in the FIPS 2.0 docs about it supporting NTFS.
> 
> Im not sure it was fips, but
> http://linux-ntfs.sourceforge.net/info/ntfsresize.html
>
> They sounds like they have this one working and they are trying to
> cooperate with PartEd. So although it might not have been fips it may have
> been a gnu tool.

Actually, it was FIPS, but unfortunately, after digging through some old notes 
of mine, I realized that I have confused two separate installation incidents 
-- my apologies. :^(

Contrary to what I stated in an earlier email, the XP machine (a Sony laptop) 
was NOT split with FIPS -- it came with a spare partition that I confiscated 
for GNU/Linux.

However, I have successfully used FIPS on a Windows 2000 machine's (SCSI) hard 
disk and it definitely had an HPFS/NTFS (type 7) filesystem. Here's part of a 
log I had done on the machine's (post-split) configuration:

------------------------------------------------------------------
Command: 'fdisk -l /dev/sda'

Disk /dev/sda: 255 heads, 63 sectors, 2213 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 bytes

   Device Boot    Start       End    Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1   *         1      1321  10610901    7  HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda2          1322      1452   1052257+  82  Linux swap
/dev/sda3          1453      2213   6112732+  83  Linux

------------------------------------------------------------------

This machine was/is a Compaq dual-CPU server, virtually unused when I did the 
FIPS split.

I'm _not_ suggesting you use FIPS on a machine with a hard disk that's 
half-full or more, mind you, but a _fresh_ installation. I believe that FIPS 
is not smart enough to move things around like you may be expecting, i.e. 
like a more sophisticated product would do. FIPS, IIRC, acts like a digital 
cleaver and chops off the last 'n' blocks of the partition for use by 
something else -- sort of a "Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!" 
mentality. It's up to you to make sure nothing resides in this last chunk of 
the partition! I suppose most defraggers would assist in this regard, but I 
haven't defragged anything in ages. I would never run FIPS unless it was a 
relatively fresh XP/NT/2000/etc install or unless I had already defragged.
 
> I can't find anything in the FIPS 2.0 docs about it supporting NTFS.

Well, that's never stopped me... :^)

In all seriousness, FIPS should work, but it's a crude tool. Try it anyway, 
just for fun, if you've got a spare hard disk to test it on.

Again, my apologies to all for causing confusion....

Bill Marr