Heres my existing structure: [code]Disk /dev/hda: 80.0 GB, 80026361856 bytes 16 heads, 63 sectors/track, 155061 cylinders Units = cylinders of 1008 * 512 = 516096 bytes Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/hda1 1 41613 20972826 7 HPFS/NTFS Partition 1 does not end on cylinder boundary. /dev/hda2 41614 43694 1048824 82 Linux swap Partition 2 does not end on cylinder boundary. /dev/hda3 * 43695 63536 10000368 83 Linux Partition 3 does not end on cylinder boundary. /dev/hda4 63537 130110 33553296 c W95 FAT32 (LBA) Partition 4 does not end on cylinder boundary.[/code] I have 11.99Gb of unused space on my HD which I'd like to use. When I try and create an extended partition, fdisk tells me: [code]You must delete some partition and add an extended partition first[/code] Now Linux supports 4 primary partitions, so how can I safely create the extended partition without disturbing anything stored elsewhere?

it is not linux, unix, or Windoes - it is your bios. Hard drives are each limited to a max of 4 primary or 3 primary + an extended partition which can have multiple "sub" partitions. As it says "You must delete some partition and add an extended partition first" - typically the last partition. If you have populated hda / hda4, you will have a bit of a problem.

You can either try resizing one of the partitions with something like parted or if you have a spare hard drive, copy the contents of a partition to that then delete the partition and create either a larger primary one or an extended partition which can hold further logical drives. If you haven't a spare drive, turn off your swap, delete the swap partition, create an extended partition with swap and the remaining space allocated, edit /etc/fstab to reflect the changes (logical drives start at hda5) and then turn swap back on. NB Always back up important data before playing around with your partition table, especially if you are resizing partitions.

Thanks for your feedback

FYI I recently installed knoppix onto a laptop hard drive which had windoze 98 on it. I booted off the knoppix CD, used qtparted (it has a GUI) to resize the one big FAT partition and to create two more (one for swap and the rest for root) and then installed knoppix. All went smoothly and it now dual boots.