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[dale_t44]

Last week when I installed Linux Mint 11, it was on a HDD that I zero-filled with WD Diags.

After I put it into the computer, I went to do the install, but, it would not let me partition the drive. So I ended up with the whole drive as the partition. Do you think if I went to re-install it would let me partition it now? I understand it is not the best thing to have Linux filling the whole drive.

Do you think this would succeed?

TIA
dale_t44

[jdeb]

I am not trying to be a wise guy Dale but it didn't let you partition or maybe you just flew through the part that lets you edit it? You can use GParted. It may be already installed. If not you can use the software manager to download and install it, type GParted in the software manager search box. Or you can open a terminal and type

sudo apt-get install gparted

[kilgoretrout]

I understand it is not the best thing to have Linux filling the whole drive.

I'm not sure what you mean by this. If Mint auto-installed using the entire drive, the installation routine created two partitions, one small one for the swap partition and a second partition from all the remaining space on that drive which contains the mint installation. There is nothing wrong with that configuration for home desktop use. If you want to create a separate data partition on that drive, you can do that.
Exactly, what are you trying to achieve? If you can go into more detail, we can give you better advice.

[dale_t44]

jdeb, I do not think you are being a wise guy. After I zero filled and installed the hard drive, I put in the live cd for Mint.

When I clicked on install mint on the desktop, I was shown the 3 drives on my computer. 1. had windows vista. 2. partition with vista restore. 3. WD 250GB drive. This (3) was the one I installed Mint on. When I clicked on this for the install, I tried to partition it to have /home and other partitions for separating parts of the OS according to the instructions from one of the Linux sites. Other than showing how much space was available it did not give me any choices.

Kilgoretrout, yes it did make a small partition for swap, and for home. Possibly I'm just confusing myself. But, I'm learning and this was something that came up on a different forum. If the installation is not a problem as is, I will leave it that way. The data partition sounds like what I wanted to do and I will add that.

[dale_t44]

Manual disk partitioning guide for Linux Mint 11

The above link is the one I was following. The information was fairly accurate. When I tried to choose the free space it requested, I was only given the whole hard drive for my choice. Since it was zero-filled, and therefore blank when I clicked on it, where "add" showed up it was greyed out, so I could not change anything.