I am dual booting winxp and opensuse 11.2 on a 80gb harddrive with 3 partitions. first primary conatins xp, second logical and active contains opensuse and third primary holds data. i want to create another partition after /dev/sda3 using the free space from /dev/sda3.can u advise me if it is possible? and if yes, what do i need to consider.
here is the output of fdisk -l
Disk /dev/sda: 80.0 GB, 80026361856 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 9729 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x285adb1d
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 1 3961 31816701 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda2 * 3962 6496 20362387+ f W95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/sda3 6497 9729 25969041 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda5 3962 4148 1502046 82 Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sda6 4149 6496 18860278+ 83 Linux
I wonder why fdisk does not at least give a warning.
In any case from your output it seems that you want to split space of partition 3, containing an NTFS file system and which at the moment is mounted on /windows/D. The df shows that it is 78% full and that about 5 Gb is frree. Do you mean to split of those lousy 5 GB, or do you want to empty this partition and create two new ones instead?
I ask because when the partition is emptied, no backups, schrinking the fs, etc. is needed. Only removing partition 3 and creating a new partition 3 (with a amaller size) andf a new partition 4 (with the rest of the disk) is to be done. fdisk can do thii easily for you. Also YaST is capable of this.
Please, no hurry. If you have to wait for one or two days without an answer you could try for a secondtime.
We are all volunteers around the world and a lot of us are at work / sleep / walking out / at dinner and thus not available at the moment that you are stuck.
The df shows that it is 78% full and that about 5 Gb is frree. Do you mean to split of those lousy 5 GB, or do you want to empty this partition and create two new ones instead
i will remove about 10 gb of data contained in this partition, and want to create a new 10 gb partition by utilizing its free space.how about using gparted.
I am not a gparted user, but I know may here use it to advantage. I suppose then (after deleting those 10 GB) it will be able to resize your NTFS fs on part-3. Then to resize your partion (those two things will most probably be presented to you as one thing by the tool). And then the creatiion of a part-4 will not be a problem.
But as always: make a backup (did allready anybody advise you to make abackup?, please do so).
And always keep in mind that you do have a non standard layout on your disk. Normaly the Extended is the last of the Primaries and then contains the rest of the disk. It is always possible that tools will warn you about the fact or even refuse to do what you want.
thanx for the help. non standard layout is result of an earlier unsuccessful install of opensuse and i didnt knew how to undo,i caused 2 of my partitions to becoming active and had to delete on of them. thats why this time i want to make sure nothing of that sort happens:)
