Hi, If this is a bit off subject for the list then I apologise, but as a potential Linux newbie with a M$95 ver. b box with a 32.bit FAT single partition HD it was important. Like I said before I am sure that Partition Magic is a great piece of software but if its your first venture into a new OS why layout 60/80$ to start? Dwight Johnson wrote..."There is no Linux utility that will make the cluster size smaller on a DOS or WIN95 partition and reclaim the space. Partition Magic is the only game in town." well that maybe true for linux but cvt.exe will do it for nothing and PM is not the only game in town..... To recap, 1. If your DOS/WIN95 partition is 16-bit FAT simply use FIPS (scandisk/defrag first) 2. If you have 16-bit FAT and are worried that you don't have sufficient space for a linux partition after using FIPS then you can convert your 16-bit FAT to 32-bit FAT non-destructively using the free M$ utility cvt.exe from <A HREF="http://www.dentalaw.com/freestuff"><A HREF="http://www.dentalaw.com/freestuff</A">http://www.dentalaw.com/freestuff</A</A>> ( this is NOT reversible ). On a "typical" single partition 1GB HD 16-bit FAT 32K clustersize this would free up about 150MB. 3. If your DOS/WIN95 partition is already 32-bit FAT simply use FIPS (scandisk/defrag first). In all cases it is better to turn off the win automatic virtual memory management ( swapfile ) otherwise FIPS might not find any free space as the swapfile tends to be at the end of the harddisk and defrag wont move it. 4. If for whatever reason you decide to backup and repartition/reformat the HD then the following undocumented switches for format and fdisk might be useful:- FDISK /FPRMT "normally" you cannot FDISK a FAT32 partition smaller than 512MB, with this switch you can. FORMAT /z:n the default clustersize for FAT16 is 32K and for FAT32 is 4K if you were desparate to get as much space as possible for an e.g. linux partition then you could FORMAT /z:n where n*512 = clustersize, on a large HD with millions of clusters there would be a performance degradation under WIN95 but as we are doing all this to get to grips with linux who cares :). Remember that all of the above only applies to ver OSR2 or later of WIN95. I did mention backing up all important stuff didn't I? :-( Thanks to Pascal for the kernel and patch info for 32-bit FAT support. -- To get out of this list, please send email to majordomo@suse.com with this text in its body: unsubscribe suse-linux-e