On Sat, 15 Apr 2000, Charles Curley wrote:
> Mess-DOS uses FAT-16, not FAT-32, so it is limited to a partition of 2
> GB. NT 4 with no SPs also has this problem for FAT partitions. As far as I
> know, there is no SP for NT 4 that supports FAT-32, so you may be out of
> luck there.
That's correct. However, System Internals
(http://www.sysinternals.com) produces a product that will let NT 4 read
from (and write to, if you purchase the full version) FAT32
filesystems. You still can't use one as a boot partition, so you'll need
at least one FAT16/NTFS filesystem.
> Then install DOS on the DOS partition. Get that running. Then install NT
> on the NT partitions. DO NOT USE NTFS. You will not be able to read NTFS
> partitions from Linux except with an experimental driver, which may not be
> reliable (I don't know, I haven't tried it lately). Installing NT will
> modify the DOS partition and change its boot sequence to allow you to boot
> to DOS or to the NT partition.
The NTFS driver works fine in Linux. The _read_ driver, that is. I
haven't tried the 2.3 writeable driver. It's marked *DANGEROUS* in the
kernel config, though, so don't use it on any volume containing anything
you can't afford to lose.
NTFS has advantages over FAT, too: it's journaled (no filesystem checks
after a crash), it can handle volume sizes up to 4GB, it's faster, and...
hmm, well, I guess that's about it.
> I use the DOS partition for those few utilities that you have to have,
> such as peripheral card configuration utilities, that only run on DOS.
It's also nice, if you use NTFS for NT, to move files between Linux and
NT. Everyone's compatible with FAT16, so no matter which operating
systems you have, or how many, you're guaranteed to be able to share files
via a FAT16 partition.
-Matt Stegman
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
