Re: Query about hard drive partitions maintenance

[Camaleón <noelamac@gmail.com>]

On Wed, 21 Mar 2012 22:47:27 +0800, Bret Busby wrote:

(...)

> The first is this; I have some empty partitions for storing data, and
> they were created using the Ubuntu 10.04 installation (before I
> installed Debian 6 on the system), and I need to know how to access them
> as a user, to move and write data to them.

(...)

For static mount points, this is usually done/set in "/etc/fstab". You 
basically need two things:

- Set the right permission options for the mount point so users can read/
write/whatever

- Create a mount point in your system with the right permissions

You can do these two things as you prefer, that is, by manually editing 
the "/etc/fstab" file and set the mount point permissions using the 
command line or using GUI tools. I prefer to do these things manually to 
have more control over the steps :-)

> The next problem may be a bit more difficult (or, unable to be solved).
> 
> In my primary partition, I have three partitions. I have a hardware
> manufacturer's partition, a recovery partition, and, as the computer
> came with MS Windows, a Windows partition, which is 84GB.

In addition to the explanation, show us the output of:

fdisk -l

So we can have an idea of the current state of your hard disk partitions.

> Having inmstalled Ubuntu and Debian 6, I want to experiment with a
> different operating system, which requires to be installed in a primary
> partition (otherwise, I could instal it in one of the unused
> partitions).

What recent operating system needs to be installed still in a primary 
partition? Can you tell what OS are you going to install?

(...)

> So, please advise whetehr I can now adjust the primary partition sda3,
> to shrink it to 42Gb and create another primary partition; sda4, that I
> could use to instal and run another operating system.

Operations with partitions are always dangerous and can lead to data loss 
(always make a full backup before playing with this) and can be handled 
by Gparted from a LiveCD (that is, from a non-running system) but your 
options will depend on your current partition layout.

Greetings,

-- 
Camaleón