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From: ray 
Newsgroups: alt.os.linux.ubuntu
Subject: Re: External HD & partition's - please help
Date: Mon, 26 Feb 2007 09:20:56 -0700
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On Mon, 26 Feb 2007 13:21:03 +0000, Neil Hindry wrote:

> I wonder if you can help me.
> Last week I brought a Maxtor 320GB external HD.  It was already formatted 
> for Windows, I know this because when I plugged it in to a USB port Windows 
> XP recognised it straight away and I was able to read & write to and from 
> it.
> 
> What I want to do is partition the Maxtor external HD so I can use 1 
> partition for Windows files and another partition for Linux files. I want to 
> do this as I can then use it to backup important data files from both OS's. 
> For information I am using Windows XP Pro & Ubuntu Linux.

AFAIK these devices are usually formatted with fat32 which both Linux and
MS can already read and write.

> 
> What I need to know is how I go about doing this?
> Do I need to reduce the size of the partition that already exists on the 
> disk (I assume that when the whole HD is used it is still classed as a 
> partition)?

yes.

> 
> Do I reduce the partition size in Windows (that is if it needs to be done)?
> Do I create the new partitions in Linux?

I would recommend gparted for doing resizing and partitioning. Caveat -
you can't work on anything that is mounted - for obvious reasons. Gparted
has a nice GUI which makes it very easy to repartition and resize.

> 
> I am not very knowledgeable where partitions are concerned so please do not 
> be too technical.
> 
> I hope you can help me.
> 
> I appreciate any help or information given.
> 
> Thanks!
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