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Installing with Resized Hard-Drive - Part 1
IDE Hard Drive for: Mepis 6 DVD | Mepis 6.04 Beta 3 | Mepis 64 Beta 3 by: je.saist Preperation Guides: Before a FAT32 or NTFS drive with Windows install can be resized there are numerous steps that need to be taken to prepare Microsoft Windows to be resized. This Guide presumes that the CCleaner, Check Disk, and Defragment Guides have been completed. CCleaner
| Check
Disk | Defragment
| Regseeker
| WinASO
Resize Part 1 | Resize Part 2 | Resize Part 3
Now, I personally am not a fan of resizing a hard-drive with Windows Installed on it in order to install Mepis. I strongly reccomend that you do not resize a hard-drive to install any linux. Following this Guide WILL PUT YOUR INFORMATION AT RISK.
Not MAY, it WILL. That being said, I understand that not everybody can afford an extra hard drive for their computer, and sometimes resizing the hard drive is the only realistic option available. So, make sure you Backup all your Windows Information before you begin. Be prepared to Re-install Windows into the resized partition even if the data survives the resizing process. This guide is built using the Mepis 64 Beta 3 disc. The installation platform is: Intel Pentium4 630 @ 3.5ghz | 1gig DDR2 800mhz | Radeon x1800XT | Radeon Xpress chipset 1: Alright, here we go, starting from the /root mode of the Mepis 64 Beta 3 disc. Left Click on Mepis Install  2: Since Mepis does contain some proprietary components, there is a license agreement. Okay, I'm fine with MP3 playback being enabled by default. Check I agree to the Terms and Left Click on next  3: Our next screen should be our hard-drive selection screen.  4: Left Click on Run QTParted  5: Don't worry about the missing graphics on the Mepis Install Screen. I'm going to go and and maximize qtparted to make it a bit easier to see.  6: Right now I only have one Hard-drive found by qtparted. On a typical Windows system, this should show up as /dev/hda or /dev/sda. Left Click on /dev/hda or /dev/sda  7: After a Moment qtparted will bring up information about the drive. Now, you'll notice that the qtparted box shows the NTFS drive all in Red. This does indicate a problem. However, it is probably best if I actually show you want this means. If you alreay know what the solid red bar means, skip to step #16. I am going to left click on the Active NTFS /dev/hda1  8: The partition is now highlighted in blue. Right Click on the Active partition to bring up the context menu.  9: Left Click on Resize  10: Here we have our first glimpse of the Resize box. We can see that the sizes are currently measured in MB, for MegaBytes.  11: Left Click on the MB to bring up a drop down box allowing us to choose GB Left Click on GB  12: Our drive size is now listed in Gigabytes, currently at 55.89.  13: I am going to change the New Size to be 51.88 We can also see that free space after has changed as well.  14: Left Click on OK  15: qtparted now gives us an error that at least 2 bad sectors are on the drive. This is why running CHKDSK is so important. Now, you could still just reformat this drive, but a resize installation is not going to happen.  16: At this point I am going to kind of cheat. I've tossed an identical ST360020A drive on as the slave drive in the IDE chain. So just follow along with your single drive. Again, we are going to Left Click on the drive we want to resize.  17: We have a different picture here on the second drive. The status bar for qtparted now shows a yellow bar and a disk space usage of 25.01gb. Left Click on the Active NTFS partition.  18: Right Click on the NTFS partition, then Left Click on Resize.  19: Same as before, going to change the size from MB to GB  20: Again, our secondary drive now shows a size of 55.89.  21: I am going to change the New Size to 45.88  22: Left Click on OK  So, what happened, was the drive resized? Part 2 I know how to resize the drive, I just want to see the install! Part 3 Take me back to the Guides. |