can anyone in London help me?

Nick · Posted: Tue Mar 22, 2005 8:31 pm Post subject: can anyone in London help me?

i just migrated from windoze.

i have a 160gb NTFS drive full of valuable data. i can't afford a new data drive, but i want to reformat the drive & keep the data.... does anyone in london have 160gb spare on a system, and if so, would they let me (& help me) transfer my data to their system then reformat the drive and move the data back on to it? of course i'd give 'em a drink for their time and help.

or does anyone have any better ideas?

Jason · Posted: Wed Mar 23, 2005 5:24 pm Post subject:

What I would do if I were you is

1) Clear 5GB space on your drive
2) Use Partition Magic to convert NTFS to FAT32
3) Resize your partittion from 160GB to 155GB
4) During the BLAG install, use the spare 5GB for your Linux partiiton and swap file

That should do it and after the install just mount your FAT32 partition. You need to purchase Partition Magic or find someone similar. Be warned things can go wrong. You might be better off paying 15 quid for a hard drive at a computer fair. A 20GB drive costs so little these days. The one down Warren Street station had some old hard drives for dirt cheap the other week. Good luck.

john maclean · Posted: Wed Mar 23, 2005 8:45 pm Post subject:

I have PM version 8.0. I used that to create my partitons when I first tried GNU/Linux. Version 7 don't work so keep clear from it. Jason's method does work. It's best to have a doze partition as FAT32 so that you can read/write to it when your're in BLAG mode.

Nick · Posted: Wed Mar 23, 2005 9:26 pm Post subject:

thnx, but won't formatting from NTFS to FAT32 delete the data?

i know i could probably get a new 160gb drive for about 50 or 60 quid from the UCL fair, but i'm skint (missus & kids come first i'm afraid!)

also, as linux will only read the NTFS drive i can't delete anything (phaps i should've mentioned i'm not dual booting & have no windoze box in the house). dunno if blag will let me burn the data to cd before formatting the drive, i guess not, but will try.

Jason · Posted: Thu Mar 24, 2005 5:36 pm Post subject:

Partition Magic doesn't format the drive. It merely converts without data loss. So then with FAT32 you can read and write to the drive.

Nick · Posted: Thu Mar 24, 2005 8:16 pm Post subject:

oh, i see...... my mate has pm on his doze box, will cart the drive round to him.

thnx for your time.

Guest · Posted: Mon Apr 04, 2005 8:06 pm Post subject:

done it!

it's working fine now, thnx again.