Hey, this question is generated purely out of my lack of knowledge.

Ok, obviously you can partition hard drives, I have Windows 2k, and can partition it from administrative tools, however, all of the help sections have utterly failed to give me any information other than "when you partition, it will not affect any of the necessary windows files" big help there... will it nail all of my other stuff to? i need to set up a 20gb partition to slap on redhat or mandrake (suggestions on which to use would be appreciated to) I have never used linux on my personal PC, nor have I really had the chance to explore it at the office either.
Basically my q is: if i set up a partition with windows 2ooo on, will it "cut" any of my files in half?

again this is founded off of my lack of knowledge, so please bear with me...

Thank You

-Henry M.

Ya, but I am seriously hurting in the fundage department... and i have an extra 50 gigs... so i dont really see the point in buying a new one... that would seem superfluous...

so strictly on a partitioning level, would I be safe to just run fdisk and set up one in bios? or would that jack my comp?

Sorry for invading the Linux fourms with just normal comp questions... but the question was spawned out of my need for linux... Thanks

Thanks much man, i will try it after I back up my hdd, if you dont hear from me for a while.... well, lets just pray that wont happen........

Listen, for making room for a new os you will have to set a primary partition (for os). So you will need to format the space in your hdd you need for that purpose. You must plan it well thought!
Let say you have a hdd of about 80gb.
You will need at about 15gb for windows 2000 in order to work properly (concerning
and the space you will need for programs also). A 55gb logical partition to save data such as mp3, mpeg etc. so as to to have them stored safely even in case an os problem occurs and for the other 10gb lets say you use 8-9gb for linux and 1-2gb for the swap files and you will be ok, having in mind that you are knew in the linux world and you just want to play with them at first so you will not need a lot of space.
Of course, the fdisk is so old that even the windows 2000 dont support it. So you'd better find a reliable partioning tool or you can use the linux installation program from your linux-cd. In any case, you dont need to buy extra hdd.
I dont know if understood your question fully, but i hope was of some help to you.

Be cool!

if you set up a partition from administrative tools it may distroy your data.
I suggest you may download some freeware most of them promised data safe.

there are two:easeus partition manager ,paragon
They could resize,creat,format,delet and hide your partitions but the free edtion can't work on server.

You can download the ISO image from the link given below and burn it on to a CD. Then you can boot off the CD and resize/create the partition(s) without disturbing your existing data. I have tested this successfully on HP Proliant servers also.

GParted -- LiveCD

Thanks,
A.