[CLUE-Tech] Partition Tools

[Nate Duehr]

Robert Woods wrote:

> My stepson is working on an installation of RedHat 7.1 to a Windows/XP 
> system. I apologize up front for the sketchy details.
>
> That said I know this.
>
> 1)      It is to be dual boot.
> 2)      It is to be backup to a production server that is running RH 
> 7.1. Hence the distro and release choice.
> 3)      He did do a de fragment on the XP partition
> 4)      He is attempting to use fips to partition the drive prior to 
> RH installation.
> 5)      The hardware is acer.
> 6)      fips is generating an error number of sectors does not match 
> partition info.
>
> On observation I have is that possibly XP has a "hidden" partition for 
> system recovery. Although XP does not seem to have a fdisk program 
> that might be helpful in displaying this information.
>
> Questions:
>
> 1)      What are the alternatives to fips you might suggest?
> 2)      Ideas on the nature of the problem.
>
> Regards Bob Woods

Bob,

Couple of questions...

Is there any reason he's sticking with such an old version of RedHat on 
the production server?  7.1 hasn't had official security patch support 
for some time.  It might be time to investigate and document what would 
be necessary to upgrade the 7.1 machine.

Generally when I see that someone has a machine running that old an OS, 
I think to myself that they might be better off switching to a 
managed-hosting environment where someone else takes care of the servers 
and OS's, and they just upload their content. 

Anyway, back to the partitioning thing... FIPS was always a relatively 
dangerous tool, and as someone mentioned it might not handle NTFS 
partitions very nicely. 

There are much safer partitioning tools (both free and pay) available 
that might be worth looking at that are new enough to understand the 
various partition types and handle them correctly.

I personally like Acronis' partitioning tools as their CD-ROM is 
bootable and the thing is very fast (unlike Partition Magic).  
http://www.acronis.com/products/partitionexpert/

Nate Duehr, nate at natetech.com