Dual Boot- Linux/XP

roamer

im going to be reformatting today. I want to dual boot xp pro and fedora core 4.
Its a 160gb drive and Im just wondering what way I should partition the drive.

I think I will have 80gb for linux and 80gb for windows. Really open to suggestions though...

jozi

Depending on what software you'll be installing i think you'd manage with 20-40gigs for both.
I used to have windows on a 40gig partition with all my aps and everything else on a different drive.
I dont know what linux will be using but i'd say 20gigs minimum should do it to.
(Install windows before linux to)

Jozi

roamer

so can I have installed apps runnning off a seperate partition as in "move my program files folder to another partition"

po0k

MBR: Bootloader (lilo, grub, whatever) + kernel etc. (you won't need to 'format' or create this 'partition', it's kinda automatic when you choose to install bootloader in the MBR).
Drive0Partition0//hda1: Swap partition. Filetype 'swap', mountpoint '/swap', size 50-150% of your ram, whatever you want. Really doesn't need to be bigger than 1024Megs.
Drive0Partition1//hda2: Windows/Linux*
Drive0Partition2//hda3: Windows/Linux*
Drive0Partition3//hda4: Storage, FAT32 (use a proper partition manager, Hiren's Boot CD 7.0 or something), whatever's left on the drive.

*Doesn't matter, but whichever is closer to the start of the drive will have a bit of performance boost.

Windows: Format FAT32 if you to be able to read/write to/from it while in linux, NTFS if you want to use files over 4Gigs in size (DVD images etc.) - but is a little trickier to get read/write access to, especially if you're unfamiliar with linux. Overall size of this partition should be at least 8Gigs say, enough to install Windows. Using nLiteOS you can create a custom Windows install CD and specify Program Files and Docs and Settings to be created on , therefore reinstalling is easy, if you have a spare 10Gig disk knocking about you can do a Ghost backup of the windows partition prior to doing anything with fruity drivers or 3rd party software. you're effectively making a backup of the Windows registry hive and driver files. All you data, apps, profiles, games etc. will be stored on the larger partition.

Linux: Format in EXT3 I guess, handiest default on most distros. XFS is sweet too though :) Again, around 8Gigs should be plenty of space to play around with.

That should get you started at least.

maidhc

I'm running the setup you speak of with a 160gb hard drive.

I gave Linux 40GB, and XP the remainder. Orignially I intended to use the 40GB from my secondary 80GB hard drive, but this did not work, i kept getting the error "NTLDR not found" or something to that effect.

I suppose how much space you need depends on which OS you will use the most. I use XP about 90% of the time, so it wouldnt make sense to hide so much of the hard drive from it.

You must install XP first, it wasnt designed to share space with other OSs!

I dont know why one would install the apps on a different partition if there is space on the windows partition. I'm far from an expert on linux though.

celt2005

If you XP to have NTFS Partition , you can use

http://www.jankratochvil.net/project/captive/

What distro of Linux are you installing, Mandrake is a nice Desktop, Debian has loads of apps built in , and FEDORA is the Network techs choice.

roamer

install underway. thanks

Stky10

maidhc wrote:

You must install XP first, it wasnt designed to share space with other OSs!

Not technically true. Its easier do it that way, but I've done it the other
way around, and after 5-10 mins of reconfiguration with the linux cd, got
grub working again.

WizZard

With Windows it automatically installs it's bootloader onto the MBR, but you have to tell Linux to.
Reinstalling GRUB/LILO onto the MBR should fix it if Windows overwrites it.