From owner-freebsd-questions Sun Oct 27 08:07:07 1996 Return-Path: owner-questions Received: (from root@localhost) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.5/8.7.3) id IAA28753 for questions-outgoing; Sun, 27 Oct 1996 08:07:07 -0800 (PST) Received: from wizard.pn.com (root@wizard.pn.com [204.96.36.2]) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.5/8.7.3) with ESMTP id IAA28738 for ; Sun, 27 Oct 1996 08:07:01 -0800 (PST) Received: from pioneer.ci.net (pioneer.ci.net [205.136.67.65]) by wizard.pn.com (8.8.0/8.8.0) with ESMTP id LAA30750; Sun, 27 Oct 1996 11:06:58 -0500 Received: from kendra.UUCP (root@localhost) by pioneer.ci.net (8.8.2/8.8.0) with UUCP id LAA05963; Sun, 27 Oct 1996 11:06:56 -0500 Received: by pandora.kew.com (UUPC/extended 1.12s); Sun, 27 Oct 1996 11:06:07 -0500 Message-ID: <3273886f.kendra@pandora.kew.com> Date: Sun, 27 Oct 1996 11:05:59 -0500 From: "Drew Derbyshire" Organization: Kendra Electronic Wonderworks (PO Box 80144, Stoneham MA 02180) To: "Barry Soben" Cc: questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Hard Drive Partitioning Sender: owner-questions@freebsd.org X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk On Sat, 26 Oct 1996 21:28:02 -0700, "Barry Soben" wrote: > Using partition magic, I partitioned my 1 gig hard drive 600 megs for MSDOS > and 400 megs for FreeBSD. Presently the 400 megs is "free space", it does > not have any sort of partition format. In reading "Installing and Running > FreeBSD", I couldn't quite figure out whether I'm best off just running FIPS > or using Partition Magic to set those 400 megs to some sort of file system.. > (Not sure which one!) Help! No, leave it free and let FreeBSD find the empty space. I _think_ you need the DOS data broken into two parts, because the 600M will require the first 1024+ cylinders, and FreeBSd (like most systems) must boot from within that area, being the root partition of the FreeBSD disk slice must start around Megabyte 470. If the DOS is akready split into a primary and extended partition, move the extended partition to the end of the disk with Partition Magic; make each partition less than 256M, and you'll recover much of the lost space in smaller cluster sizes (PM will recluster for you if you ask it). If you have one big primary partition, you're using 16K clusters which eat disk space anyway ... create an extended partition in the last 255M of the 400M, copy a reasonable amount of data to it, then shrink the primary partition to 255M. See the Partition Magic docs for further comments on why to use smaller partitions and the affect on cluster sizes. In any case, let FreeBSD create the new partition, works fine. (I did.) -ahd- -- Internet: ahd@kew.com Voice: 617-279-9810 "In space, no one can hear you forget." - David M. Watt