My Hard Drive has a single partition?

-If that's not a contradiction, I thought I'd resize it and install Linux but the drive has a lock on it and wont let me partition. Any way round this?You can't partition a drive that's mounted and you can't umount a drive that's in use.



Boot from your Linux live CD and install that way but make sure your data is safe of course.You can use ACRONIS DISK DIRECTOR (there are others) to resize a partition



With ACRONIS you can do it either of 2 ways

Run the program under WIN(whatever)

Set the new C: partition to the size you want

This will leave an empty space for the linux partition

You can create a new partition in this space at the same time if you want

Since you cant resize the C: partition immediately(cos its in use) when you tell the program to execute it will reboot the pc and proceed to execute the commands BEFORE the pc loads WIN(?) (cos the drive is not locked now)

When its complete it will reboot a second time but now back into WIN(?) but with the partition now resized.



The second way is to create a bootable cd in the first place (I recommend you do this anyway)

(Cant remember whether the supplied cd is bootable or not. however if you run the program one of the options is to create a bootable cd that will boot straight into the program

You can then proceed exactly as before except the pc will not need to reboot cos C: is not locked



As someone else has said its VERY important that you create a disk image BEFORE you resize

(I use ACRONIS TRUE IMAGE but there are others) . Its VERY important that its an image, DONT just copy cos it wont work if you have to reload the drive)





NB

(If you have both programs you can create one bootable cd containing both programs and select which one you want on bootup)
There are many tools that should be able to help you. Download and burn a Live CD image of your favorite linux distribution and boot to it. Get the command line/shell up and (as root) run fdisk against the target drive (e.g fdisk /dev/xxxn ). You should then be able to create and delete any partitions.
Try partition assistant, this program may be can help you partition your hard drive, for more detailed instruction, please go on read the article:

http://www.extend-partition.com/resource鈥?/a>
Install and run easus partition master, it's free and works amazingly.

http://www.partition-tool.com/download.h鈥?/a>

just make sure to backup your important stuff first