Dual Boot on same HDD

zAbbo

Ok i`ve got WinXP(which i need for college ****) and i want to install Linux(either man9 or rh8)

Whats the best way to attack this

I can make a small 5gb partition for Linux which would prolly be at the end of the drive, does this matter

Its a 40GB HDD with 35GB for Windows and an unformatted 5 for linux, booting off raid as well.

Also if I decide to remove Linux will i still be able to boot into windows (sad i know :rolleyes: )

Thoughts?

sceptre

I've heard lots of people swearing that LILO has a problem when the Linux partition is outside of the first 8GB of the drive

Perhaps they're confusing it with old windows limitations, I don't know.

Either way, I've installed RH8 as part of a treble boot (with 98&XP) and it's after the first 8GB without any problems. I took the safe route and used GRUP rather than LILO though.

I'd say if you've 40 to go around and you really only need XP for college, why not give linux a little more space? You'll need three partitions for Linux at least btw - one for LILO or GRUP, one for install and one for swap space. The install will handle all this though.

You won't have many problems if you later decide to dump Linux - either keep the boot loader as it is or if you must be neat just change the XP partition back as the boot partition (you can ask about that when the time comes, easy all the same)

zAbbo

Hmmm, i seem to understand all you`ve said so far, the HDD is gonna be formatted now anyway, with on second thoughts 30 GB to XP and 10 to Linux.

The 10gb being unformatted so the installer can set up the usr, swap etc partitions.

If lionux is removed will grup still be there, or does the boot.ini file of windows be used, ah well either way, i`ll prolly be tinkering with the OS`s anyway.

The 40gb is soley for OS with a spare 40GB for files and a coming soon 80/120 also for files/mp3/pr0n

Should be doing this either later(the early hours, its 2 am now ) or tomorrow at some stage.

Cheers

Typedef

I notice you have mentioned raid.

If you want to use raid on Linux, I would simply suggest allowing the Red Hat or Mandrake installer take care of that for you.

I wouldn't use raid, well to be acurate I'd use linear raid, but wouldn't bother with raid-0 raid-3 and so on, certainly not for a PC system, where you don't have vital information (mission critical the office droids call it) to protect.

Then use raid mirroring across different hard disks, not different partitions.

If you have a hardware raid card and the 5gb of unformatted space is in fact 10gb across a raid mirror of some sort, then you will need the drivers for your raid card, at a guess aacraid <==google for that.

Adios and good luck.

Typedef

Note: Modern day Lilo has no problem with the 1024 cylinder mark, but you should probably use the grub anyway, because lets face it as bootloader names go, grub owns lilo.

zAbbo

Sorry typedef, i sorta made it unclear.

Im using the onboard raid controller as 2 extra IDE ports, I`ve used RAID 0 before, but thisn`t didnt warrant the productivity i expected.

***Update****

Ive installed XP on the 40gb disk on its own 30gb partition, Im installing RH8 later on on the 10gb RAW partition(allowing the cutsey installer to do the partitioning

Afaik RH8 natively supports RAID devices

Red Alert

Just to say, you've said you need Windows XP for college - i dunno what course you're doing. I have a dual boot Win98 and RedHat 8.0 machine and i haven't booted into windows since about 3 weeks ago.

I do word processing, spreadsheets, accessing college email and C programming all without using windows.

Anyway back to your question, here's my quick and nasty guide: use GRUB boot loader and set it for the MBR (Master Boot Record).

I have two hard disks so one is my main Linux and swap partitions and the other one holds windows and my old windows files. Make sure you set up the /etc/fstab file in Linux to mount your WIN98 partitions so you can read all your old files.

ironape

yeah, what the hoopla do you need XP for?!?! The only acceptable excuse for that is a specialist application that isn't available on any other platform.

/me has his "tut tut" face ready

Ape

zAbbo

IIS 5.0

I need it to develop an ASP based year long project, its outta my hands.

Oh and i want to play some games as well

ironape

ah, I see

I need it for college = I'm going to play games on it in college and pretend to be working.



Ape