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<sect2 arch="i386"><title>Partitioning From DOS or Windows</title>
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If you are manipulating existing FAT or NTFS partitions, it is
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recommended that you either use the scheme below or native Windows or
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DOS tools. Otherwise, it is not really necessary to partition from DOS
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or Windows; the Linux partitioning tools will generally do a better
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But if you have a large IDE disk, and are using neither LBA addressing,
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overlay drivers (sometimes provided by hard disk manufacturers), nor a
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new (post 1998) BIOS that supports large disk access extensions, then
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you must locate your Debian boot partition carefully. In this case,
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you will have to put the boot partition into the first 1024 cylinders
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of your hard drive (usually around 524 megabytes, without BIOS
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translation). This may require that you move an existing FAT or NTFS
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<title>Lossless Repartitioning When Starting From DOS, Win-32 or OS/2
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One of the most common installations is onto a system that already
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contains DOS (including Windows 3.1), Win32 (such as Windows 95, 98, Me,
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NT, 2000, XP), or OS/2, and it is desired to put Debian onto the same disk
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without destroying the previous system. As explained in the
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<xref linkend="partition-sizing"/>, decreasing the size
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of an existing partition
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will almost certainly damage the data on that partition unless certain
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precautions are taken. The method described here, while not
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guaranteed to protect your data, works extremely well in practice. As
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a precaution, you should <emphasis>make a backup</emphasis>.
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Before going any further, you should have decided how you will be
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dividing up the disk. The method in this section will only split a
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partition into two pieces. One will contain the original OS and the
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other will be used for Debian. During the installation of Debian, you
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will be given the opportunity to use the Debian portion of the disk as you
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see fit, i.e., as swap or as a file system.
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The idea is to move all the data on the partition to the beginning,
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before changing the partition information, so that nothing will be
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lost. It is important that you do as little as possible between the
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data movement and repartitioning to minimize the chance of a file
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being written near the end of the partition as this will decrease the
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amount of space you can take from the partition.
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The first thing needed is a copy of <command>fips</command> which is
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available in the <filename>tools/</filename> directory on your nearest Debian
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mirror. Unzip the archive and copy the files
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<filename>RESTORRB.EXE</filename>, <filename>FIPS.EXE</filename> and
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<filename>ERRORS.TXT</filename> to a bootable floppy. A bootable floppy can
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be created using the command <filename>sys a:</filename> under DOS.
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<command>fips</command> comes with very good documentation which you may
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want to read. You will definitely need to read the documentation if
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you use a disk compression driver or a disk manager. Create the disk
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and read the documentation <emphasis>before</emphasis> you defragment the disk.
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The next thing needed is to move all the data to the beginning of the
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partition. <command>defrag</command>, which comes standard with DOS 6.0 and
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later can easily do the job. See the <command>fips</command> documentation
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for a list of other software that may do the trick. Note that if you
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have Windows 9x, you must run <command>defrag</command> from there, since
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DOS doesn't understand VFAT, which is used to support for long
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filenames, used in Windows 95 and higher.
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After running the defragmenter (which can take a while on a large
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disk), reboot with the <command>fips</command> disk you created in the
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floppy drive. Simply type <filename>a:\fips</filename> and follow the directions.
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Note that there are many other other partition managers out there, in
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case <command>fips</command> doesn't do the trick for you.
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<sect3 id="partitioning-for-dos"><title>Partitioning for DOS</title>
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If you are partitioning for DOS drives, or changing the size of DOS
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partitions, using Linux tools, many people experience problems working
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with the resulting FAT partitions. For instance, some have reported
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slow performance, consistent problems with <command>scandisk</command>, or
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other weird errors in DOS or Windows.
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Apparently, whenever you create or resize a partition for DOS use,
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it's a good idea to fill the first few sectors with zeros. Do this
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prior to running DOS's <command>format</command> command, from Linux:
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<informalexample><screen>
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dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hdXX bs=512 count=4
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</screen></informalexample>