On Wed, 2001-12-19 at 10:17, Robert Leduc wrote: > 1) The new partition need not be bootable; can I ignore this > 1024 cylinder limit thing then? Yup. > 2) Does my version of Win98 or my bios place restrictions on the > size of the partition I can create? Where would I look to find > an answer? Nope. > 3) I tentatively tried to use RH's fdisk to create a new > partition but didn't save the partition table. I couldn't see > how to make it of type "Win95 VFAT" rather than of type "Linux". > Should this be a worry or does this change after somehow > formatting the new partition? Maybe what I need is a rough > outline of which commands I need to consider executing? Note, RH > 7.2 doesn't seem to ship with cfdisk, more's the pity. You use the "t" command to change the type of a partition in fdisk. > 4) For example, what is the linux command for "formatting" the > drive as FAT32? Formatting the drive under Linux is not recommended. After creating the partition with fdisk, you should reboot and format under Windows. > 5) When I create this new partition, the linux drive assignments > hda1 -- hda9 or so won't be in order based on the cylinders they > occupy. I can reorder this using fdisk. Should I? If so, I > realize I will have to change my /etc/fstab to reflect the new > numbering. Are there any other places I'd need to change things? > I use grub as a boot loader; since /boot and / won't move I > assume it will still work regardless. It's ok to have partitions in the wrong order. Fdisk may warn you about it, but there is nothing dangerous about it. > 6) My hope is that if I ever need to increase the size of /, I > could use partition magic to reduce the size of the new windows > partition and then do a linux reinstall and create a new, larger > / (likely to occur only in a future upgrade of the operating > system from cdrom). I only have partition magic ver 4, but would > upgrade to 5 if that is necessary. Would this work or is this a > bad idea? People tend to avoid making promises about fips, but > would fips be a better alternative? I heartily recommend GNU parted. It can do everything Partition Magic can do, and it's free. > Thanks very much for any help on any of the above. You're welcome!