* * * * * * * * CROSS POSTED: * * * * * * * *
alt.linux.redhat, alt.os.linux.redhat, linux.redhat,
linux.redhat.install

Hello to All:

My home computer system consists of a 2002 built MicronPC ClientPro
325 with its original Intel D845GRG motherboard whose CPU is a Pentium
4, 2.0GHz, 400 FSB and 2GB of RAM.

I have two each 40GB IDE hard disks such that hda, a WDC
WD400BB-00DEA0, on the Primary Master, has Windows XP Pro on hda1, and
is formatted NTFS, hda2 (FAT32) is a shared partition for both
systems. The 2nd hard disk, a Maxtor 6L040L2, on the Primary Slave,
(hdb) has eleven Linux partitions and is formatted EXT3 (now) for my
Linux system, presently a Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.1 (Tikanga).

As can be guessed, the system had originally been a single boot XP
system, as originally built by Micron. The 2nd hard disk was later
added for dual boot with RHEL3 (Taroon). The hdb partitions were
originally sized through the advice of others, and although I've
adjusted their sizes with Partition Magic 8 and GParted in the early
days of EXT2, I've never retired my partition quantities from my
original choices.

The 2nd hard disk (hdb) is exclusively for Linux and approximately
17GB, of its total 40GB, is unpartitioned.

My hdb information:

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id Partition
/dev/hdb1 * 1 17 136521 83 /boot
/dev/hdb2 18 1292 10241437+ 83 /usr
/dev/hdb3 1293 1419 1020127+ 83 /usr/local
/dev/hdb4 1420 4866 27688027+ 5 Extended
/dev/hdb5 1420 1674 2048256 82 Linux swap
/dev/hdb6 1675 1929 2048256 83 /var
/dev/hdb7 1930 2184 2048256 83 /
/dev/hdb8 2185 2439 2048256 83 /spare
/dev/hdb9 2440 2503 514048+ 83 /opt
/dev/hdb10 2504 2567 514048+ 83 /home
/dev/hdb11 2568 2631 514048+ 83 /tmp

Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/hdb7 1.9G 1.2G 641M 66% /
/dev/hdb1 130M 13M 110M 11% /boot
tmpfs 950M 0 950M 0% /dev/shm
/dev/hdb10 487M 11M 451M 3% /home
/dev/hdb9 487M 76M 386M 17% /opt
/dev/hdb8 1.9G 35M 1.8G 2% /spare
/dev/hdb11 487M 217M 245M 47% /tmp
/dev/hdb2 9.5G 4.0G 5.0G 45% /usr
/dev/hdb3 965M 38M 878M 5% /usr/local
/dev/hdb6 1.9G 368M 1.5G 21% /var
/dev/hda2 2.0G 1.5G 538M 74% /mnt/share

"system-config-lvm" says that all my Linux partitions are of a
"Uninitialized Disk Entity" class. This is due to the fact that I was
not courageous enough to create anything with LVM back then. Suffice
to say that nothing has been done to enjoy the benefits of LVM since.

Question: Since my RHEL5.1 Tikanga is used as a running & viable
system, and as long as I have recent partition backups, would I be
able to "Initialize all the Disk Entities" and probably not loose
anything? My Red Hat software is up-to the-minute current.

Thank you in advance,
Onepeanutwhistle