need to format ntfs drives

[siaphu]

hey folks, need a little help. I need to format several drives for use with Kubuntu, these are ntfs partions and the drives are loaded to the hilt and I dont want to lose anything.

Can I use partition magic or another program to do this? any help would be greatly appreciated. I am somewhat of a newb to linux

[askrieger]

Re: need to format ntfs drives

I'm not sure I understand what you are asking. If your ntfs drives are full, there is no way that you can repartition them under either Linux or windoze that will not cause you to lose data. If there is free space, you can certainly use either PM or one of the Linux partitioners to set up a Linux partition.

Personally, when I have to set up a system to dual boot with windoze, I use a good windoze defragger to reduce the wasted space in the windows partition. Then I use PM to reduce the size of the ntfs partition and then I use the partioning tool on the Linux install disk to genereate the Linux partition(s).

[dglock]

Re: need to format ntfs drives

hey folks, need a little help. I need to format several drives for use with Kubuntu, these are ntfs partions and the drives are loaded to the hilt and I dont want to lose anything.

Can I use partition magic or another program to do this? any help would be greatly appreciated. I am somewhat of a newb to linux

If you format the drives all data will be lost!

If you only want to convert the ntfs file system to a different file system then partition magic will work fine.

don

[expatCM]

Re: need to format ntfs drives

Reading between the lines I think what he wants to do is to convert an NTFS partition without loss of data. The data can then be freely used.

If you mount that partition I think all the files are RO and you cannot write back an update to NTFS ... so what to do?

Patition Magic is a Windows program. So what do you do in Linux?

I also want to know. I have at least 300 GB in NTFS and the file system all needs converting. Moving the data and formatting is not a fun idea ....

[dglock]

Re: need to format ntfs drives

Reading between the lines I think what he wants to do is to convert an NTFS partition without loss of data. The data can then be freely used.

If you mount that partition I think all the files are RO and you cannot write back an update to NTFS ... so what to do?

Patition Magic is a Windows program. So what do you do in Linux?

I also want to know. I have at least 300 GB in NTFS and the file system all needs converting. Moving the data and formatting is not a fun idea ....

Partition magic is NOT just a windows program!

The bootable cd will work in any os.

You can convert from ntfs to any linux file system except reiserfs, for that you need the bootable cd from acronis disk director. I have converted file systems many times using these programs without any data loss.

don

[randcoop]

Re: need to format ntfs drives

Parition Magic will not convert NTFS to any Linux file system. It is able to convert to FAT and FAT32 from NTFS without data loss.