Need help using Fdisk in Knoppix..

[ashore]

Apologies for the newbie-ish question, but I'm finding myself in a bit of a bind here. :( Basically I was attempting to dual boot Windows and Linux, and the typical partitining horror story kicked in and basically my mbr is completely messed up so I'm in the process of trying to get things back in order, if possible.

Anyway, I've been trying to figure out ways to format my hard drive since my Win98SE bootdisk didn't work(driver error), and the Windows Full Install CD is having problems detecting my hard drive, so what I decided to try and do is run Knoppix from a CD and use Fdisk to format my drive, but embarrassingly enough I'm completely new to Linux so I'm really not sure how to use Fdisk to format. Would anyone mind helping me out with this one? Any input is really appreciated, thanks. :)

[UnderScore]

- Boot knoppix
- get a console command line window or choose the icon in the Knoppix menu "Root console"
- If you choose "Root console", skip this command and proceed to the next step. type
su -
which will give you root (which is superuser or administrator) access
- If your harddrive is C: and is the first drive on the primary IDE chain, then it is known to linux as /dev/hda. You can now type:
cfdisk /dev/hda
(notice that we are using the more friendly cfdisk command instead of the standard fdisk command.
In cfdisk you can use the arrow and Enter keys to partition the harddrive. If you don't want to make any changes, then you can QUIT and it will not make any changes. If you want to keep the changes you made then must choose WRITE, and it will write the new partition table to the hard drive, then you can quit and reboot the PC and try to install Windows.
I hope this helps.
James

[user unknown]

I assume you have one harddrive, connected as first hd on the first controller, and which is therefore named /dev/hda.

A second device on the first controller would be /dev/hdb, the first dev. at the sec. controller /dev/hdc and so on.

I assume further, that you like to have a partition for win, a normal one for linux (type=83), and a swap-partition for linux (type=82).
For win98 you will use a vfat-partition (fat32? not sure, type=c).

For the size of your partitions you decide by your needs - if you have no idea do it like this: your physical RAM * 2 for swap, 50% of the rest for win98 and linux.

To partition the drive, you call


fdisk /dev/hda

You will get a prompt which shows that you get the list of options with 'm'.
I would start 'p' - print partition-table.

Depending what you get as response, you may delete the partitions listed there.
Create a new partition (primary) for win98 as first partition - which will be '/dev/hda1' for linux and 'C:' for windows.
Toggle the bootable flag for this.
Create the two linux-partitions.
The list of types you get with 'l'.

If you're unsure, you may always leave the program with 'q'. As long as you don't hit 'w' like 'write' - your changes aren't made.

After partitioning, you have to format the partitions.
mkfs.reiserfs for the linux-partition (/dev/hda2).
If you can format the win-partititon with the windows-install medium, I would prefer that.