hey all, new to the forums and new to opensuse, my desktop computer has 2 hardrives, one 70gb and one 40gb, previously, the 40gb was windows XP and the 70gb was a backup, I decided to install opensuse on the 70gb backup, and now I want to wipe out the 40gb HDD that has windows xp and turn that into a back up, how would I do this?
Thanks.
If the XP HD is just one partition you can just delete all the files on it from within openSUSE and use it as it is, unless you want to change the format of the disk.
If you open a terminal and become su -
post result of
fdisk -l
we will see more
thanks for the fast reply, this is what I got.
Disk /dev/sda: 40.0 GB, 40020664320 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 4865 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x27af27ae
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 1 4864 39070048+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
Disk /dev/sdb: 80.0 GB, 80026361856 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 9729 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x88db7687
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdb1 1 262 2104483+ 82 Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sdb2 263 2873 20972857+ 83 Linux
/dev/sdb3 2874 9729 55070820 83 Linux
So on the 40gb that has windows xp,I can just delete it all and use it as a back up no problem?, would changing the file system have any impact on performance etc.
EDIT - when I go into the 40gb, I can’t delete any of the files, theres no delete option.
You need to do some work first
Post result of this from terminal
cat /etc/fstab
I’m leading you to this, so you may be able to work it out yourself.
FSTAB - Editing Manually - openSUSE Forums
@swerdna has a help here too
HowTo Mount NTFS Filesystem Partition Read Write Access in openSUSE
reboot required
then you will be good to go
So on the 40gb that has windows xp,I can just delete it all and use it as a back up no problem?
Yep.
would changing the file system have any impact on performance etc.
Yes, if you have a windows free system I would use the ext4 file system,
You may also want to delete the windows entry in /boot/grub/menu.lst
I get this
/dev/disk/by-id/ata-ST380011A_5JV9NM1P-part1 swap swap defaults 0 0
/dev/disk/by-id/ata-ST380011A_5JV9NM1P-part2 / ext4 acl,user_xattr 1 1
/dev/disk/by-id/ata-ST380011A_5JV9NM1P-part3 /home ext4 acl,user_xattr 1 2
/dev/disk/by-id/ata-ST340015A_5LA30FAS-part1 /windows/C ntfs-3g users,gid=users,fmask=133,dmask=022,locale=en_US.UTF-8 0 0
proc /proc proc defaults 0 0
sysfs /sys sysfs noauto 0 0
debugfs /sys/kernel/debug debugfs noauto 0 0
devpts /dev/pts devpts mode=0620,gid=5 0 0
and thanks for the links i’ll check them now.
When you want to use that disk (one partition) as a backup for your openSUSE system and there is thus no Windows any more, I would certainly format it into an ext4 file system. Using a Windows file system type in a Linux only shop is asking for disappointments.
oh I see,is there a program I can get to format it into ext4?
would changing the file system have any impact on performance etc.
On this point I would use ext4.
oh I see,is there a program I can get to format it into ext4?
Parted Magic does a nice job of this, but you could use the partitioning tool in openSUSE, or other tools.
cool,I just opened expert partitioner…no clue what to do LOL, I see the windows partition, I clicked " edit " , and now I see the format option for "sda1 " I ticked format with the file system as ext4
Below it states mounting options, should I mount it or not? ( no idea what it means, excuse my lack of knowledge on this )
Choose a mount point for the partition, perhaps /backup or /data, you will have to type the mount point info.
One further note, I’m assuming you have backed up any info you need from /dev/sda1.
yep I have nothing I want on sda1, its now formated as ext4 ( woohoo! ), and is named back up, theres a folder in there called lost+found, when I click it, it says " could not enter /backup/lost+found "
Also,when I rebooted, at the menu it still has Windows as an option,how come and how can I get rid of this.
what is this folder?
ps - Thanks everyone for the help, much appreciated!
Well, YaST is the ystem management tool of openSUSE. Look around there a little bit so you get some idea where it is good for.
In this case YaST > System > Partitioning brings you all you need.
Also,when I rebooted, at the menu it still has Windows as an option,how come and how can I get rid of this.
You will need to use a text editor as su - to edit the /boot/grub/menu.lst file and remove the windows entry.
Again, why not use YaST > System > Bootloader and remove the entry there?
I know that everything can be configured by using* vi *on a file if you know which one. But YaST was not invented for nothing. IMHO irr was invented to help less knowing people to make system management tasks easy to do.
thanks I got rid of the windows entry 
My backup drive, I can’t seem to do anything in there, can’t copy any files over to it,and can’t delete this lost and found folder. Did I do something when I formated?
@hcw Fair comment, I have not tried YaST for this. With an option there it makes sense to use it.
I do a lot of management with vi, etc. But Im am an old hand and slow in learning new things 
But I think we should encourage new users to use tools like YaST because it will battle the ideas that openSUSE is difficult to manage. Also other, visiting these threads searching for solution should see how easy it is.