Hidden Surprise

[iceman]

My laptop (which is a work laptop that I use for personal stuff/imaging as well) HDD has 2 partitions, 20 gig each which keep running out of space thanks to long imaging runs and processing routines. I naturally assumed I had a 40gig drive.

I ordered a 300gig external USB2 drive which should arrive tomorrow.

Anyway was fumbling around looking for something and ended up in device manager, and to my surprise, found that the harddrive is actually 60gig!

Went into disk manager and found 20 gig of unallocated space! I formatted it and now I have a spare 20 gig! :) yay! :)

But no, i'm not returning my 300gig external drive :)

[Astroman]

Awesome Mike, wonder if they do this to all laptops :)

[h0ughy]

sounds like there is only a nominal 40 gig image loaded for you to get the extra like that! so it will be filled by the weekend?

[xstream]

:lol: Mike would have it filled by now! Dave.

[janoskiss]

Plenty of room for Linux then. :D

[ving]

you are still gunna ned the external HD sir, you know that :P

[davidpretorius]

each time i get a computer upgrade and the hard disk space sky rockets, i reckon i will never fill it. but within a month, it is full!

[iceman]

Steve, funny you should mention that.. If the USB2 camera still can't write 10/15fps uncompressed to the new HDD without dropping frames, then I know that windows is the bottleneck.

So as long as I can find Linux drivers for the new camera, I'll create a linux partition to use while capturing.

[janoskiss]

Bird should be able to help you out with Linux drivers. He does all his capturing in Linux.

[iceman]

Depends on the camera though.. if there's no drivers for it i'm stuffed either way.
I know there's linux drivers for the ToUcam, but that doesn't help.

[h0ughy]

be very carefull with that Mike, once you go down the path you cannot return. A dual boot linux system, LILO takes over as the boot manager which is linux driven, so windows becomae the second boot option. If you remove linux for some reason later, you wont be able to boot to windows. Pick SUSE10 if you do easy to use!

[RB]

So Mike if Bird helps you out with Linux, can we call you Penguin ???

[Striker]

Nice surprise Mike.....but 20 gig is nothing compared to your big 300 gig on it's way.

[janoskiss]

That is not true in general. But if you have limited experience you might end up in that predicament. But don't despair, look and ask for help. Linux distributions are a bit like eyepieces. Every user has their favourite flavour. Unfortunately, last time I looked, there was still no ideal beginner's distro around. Even with all the config tools and wizards you will probably still have to get your hands dirty editing config files and/or start-up scripts at some point.

[iceman]

I'm not a unix newbie, i've developed in linux (a bit) and unix (mainly) for many years at work. I've no problem with config files, shell scripts or other.

When the time comes, i'll ask for more advice about flavours of unix as it's been years since i've been in that loop.

[mojo]

You can always 'return'.
You can specify whatever OS you want to be the default in lilo.
Formatting your Linux partition to remove Linux doesn't neccesarily remove lilo.
You can use lilo to boot into windows without Linux installed.
'fdisk /mbr' removes lilo.
I like you Houghy - I'd hate to ban you for sounding too much like a Microsoft press release :D

[RB]

:rofl:

Bill Houghy or Dave Gates.....sounds great, don't forget us Houghy.

:whistle:

[h0ughy]

I only use MS because I have to with scertain software, I have a dual boot laptop with Xp pro and suse9.3 (I havent put it to 10 yet)

Have had linux for some years, mandrake, red hat and SUSE, suse has been my pick.

I'd hate to be banned for supporting Microsoft:eyepop: since I have been trying to push the open source barrow at work with Openoffice etc. We spend at council over $355000 per year in MS licencing. for 900 pcs and 25 servers. what a joke. Sorry Mike:D

[stinky]

You can use Windows (XP) to dual boot with Linux.. no need for Lilo. As a newbies distro' Mandrake is excellent. redHHat was my pick but the off the shelf images are just getting to big and resorce demanding. Sweet when it all ran on a 486 with 16meg of Ram!

[janoskiss]

:lol: at Mojo.

[cjmarsh81]

Go to www.Ubuntu.com and order one of their free CD's or more, they encourage you to get as many as you want and pass them out.

The advantage of this linux is it comes with a live cd and an install cd. So you can boot up from the live cd and see what linux is like without touching your hard disk. If it works the way you want it to, then you can worry about installing it.

[GTB_an_Owl]

Mike
I have a spare copy or two of Ubuntu if you want it.
Has the Install disc and the "Live" disc in the package.
Let me know if you want it - will bring to Ilford or make other arrangements if you want it earlier.

[netwolf]

I would reccomend Knoppix Live DVD to try out the new 5 version is coming out shortly and its got everything u need to try out Linux without harming your current Operating Systme.

I am new to linux but i find knoppix is very easy to use. Also Vmware Server from vmware.com is being offered for free as is vmplayer. Vmware allows u to emulate a virtual pc within your exisitng pc. You can use this to create a virtual linux pc to try out.

PS: I belive the Linux Expo/confrence is on next week for 3 days in Sydney Darling harbour. I am betting you can pickup a free DVD/CD of various Linux distros during the show.

Regards

[mojo]

Okay, okay... You had me at hello :P

[janoskiss]

:eyepop: That is a shocking statistic!!! So many taxpayer dollars wasted on a bunch of glorified typewriters! It moggles the bind. :mad2:

[acropolite]

Mike are you sure that the 20Gb isn't the laptop's recovery partition???