Re: Need to clean up the hard disk

[Mark Knecht <markknecht attbi com>]

Albert,
   There's something to be said for simplicity, 
eh?! ;-)

fdisk /dev/hda

Then use the 'd' command to delete a partition. You would delete 5, 6 &
7 first, and after that, you should be able to delete the extended
partition that seems to have caused the problems.

At the end of that process I beleive you will need to use the 'w'
command to write the changes to disk.

It would be VERY smart to do a little bit of web browsing to find some
instructions on doing this. We all add partitions more than we delete
them. Good to read before you create a problem.

   I think you should continue to have a swap partition though, and
you're set up to use hda4 right now. Delete the hda7 partition, and
delete the hda7 swap line in your fstab.

   Sorry we weren't able to get your data back. Too bad we did all that
work, but I think it was good learning along the way.

Cheers,
Mark

On Sun, 2003-06-01 at 12:05, Albert DE WINT wrote:
> Hi Mark and Otto,
> 
> First I'd like to thank both of you for the outstanding assistance on my
> "partition" experience!  It was an interesting exercice.
> 
> Now that lost I Mandrake, I don't feel like installing it again.
> Let it be... (John Lennon)
> 
> I had a hard time, reinstalling WinXP for my kids, today.
> I still have to take care about a new MBR to make RH9 boot.
> (I now use a floppy to boot.)
> 
> I noticed WinXP 'rearranged' the partition table.
> So, HD9 fails to install the swap partition hda4 while booting. 
> 
> [root dimension etc]# cat fstab
> LABEL=/        /              ext3    defaults        1 1
> LABEL=/boot    /boot          ext3    defaults        1 2
> none           /dev/pts       devpts  gid=5,mode=620  0 0
> none           /proc          proc    defaults        0 0
> none           /dev/shm       tmpfs   defaults        0 0
> /dev/hda4      swap           swap    defaults        0 0
> /dev/hda7      swap           swap    defaults        0 0
> /dev/cdrom     /mnt/cdrom     udf,iso9660 noauto,owner,kudzu,ro 0 0
> /dev/cdrom1    /mnt/cdrom1    udf,iso9660 noauto,owner,kudzu,ro 0 0
> /dev/fd0       /mnt/floppy    auto    noauto,owner,kudzu 0 0
> [root dimension etc]#
> 
> I suppose I can do without swap. 'top' says I don't use it.
> Besides, I have plenty of DRAM (512MB).
> 
> But I would like to 'clean up' that messy disk. Can this be done using
> some REDHAT tools? PartitionMagic has made me think twice before jumping
> into another adventure. I'd rather not use it again.
> 
> Albert