[CentOS] Partioning Error: Dual Boot, WinXP & CentOS5, 27 GB Free space; my error is?

[John Bowden]

On Sunday 25 November 2007 16:51:31 Lanny Marcus wrote:
> Hello: Starting Friday afternoon, I blew away the installations on the
> three (3) boxes we use as Desktops. On two (2) of them (my Dell
> Dimension 2400 and my wife's Compaq Evo D300v), I have MS Windows XP
> and CentOS5 running.   :-)  On my daughters box (Dell Dimension 4300)
> I am having problems with the partitioning. Probably this is due to
> some mistake I have made, with regard to "Active" or "Primary"
> partitions? The HD has four (4) NTFS partitions on dev/hda. hda1 >
> hda4. According to the partition table shown in the CentOS5
> installation, there is 27925 MB of Free Space on the HD. If I try to
> create a /boot partition (100 MB) or an LVM, I get: "Error
> partitioning - Could not allocate requested partitions. Partitioning
> failed. Could not allocate partitions as primary partitions. Not
> enough space left to create partition for /boot    More or less the
> same error: "Automatic partitioning errors - You have not defined a
> root (/) partition. This can happen if not enough space."  What am I
> doing wrong on that box? TIA!
> -
> Lanny
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I think the problem is that you can only have 4 Primary partitions on a disk. 
If you to convert one of the NTFS partitions to an extended partition, with 
the NTFS partition inside it. Personally, if you want to keep the 4 drive 
letters in windoz, I would back up the whole disk ("in case"), set up the 
disk with 1 Primary NTFS partition and an extended Partition with the other 3 
NTFS partitions inside it. Leave the free space as free space and let the 
CentOS installer to use the free space as it sees fit