On Sunday 21 September 2003 06:43 am, Lance Cummings wrote:
> I am going to give Mandrake 9.1 a look, coming from the MS world.
>
> Until I get real comfortable with the idea the Linux can work for me,
> XP will remain the primary OS on the box, so we start by needing to
> work around that a little bit.
>
> I have about 35 GB at the back of a 160 GB Seagate ATA100 that I'm
> going to use to see how this goes. The space is an extended
> partition right now; there are already three primaries in front of
> it.
>
> My plan would be to put the entire works in logical drives inside the
> extended, with a boot floppy for starting Linux. (I'd like to keep
> the loader off the MBR for now, since I have critical stuff on the MS
> primaries, and I really hesitate to put anything between me and a
> straight XP boot, at least until I'm very sure that it won't
> interfere with me getting into Windows when I need to. Maybe somebody
> can convince me otherwise; I'm a pretty reasonable guy.) ^_^
>
> I'd like suggestions on how to partition this 35 gig space for the
> Linux file system, and which particular file system to use. I have a
> gigabyte of RAM, and until I become very convinced that I want to
> make this migration, I would not be using the Linux side for anything
> extremely intensive (no video editing, for example).
>
> Appreciate any and all input in advance.
>
> Lance
>
>
>
I don't think that I would worry about the MBR and for that matter I don't
think I would worry about the partitioning. During the installation there is
a warning that says to back up any important data and maybe it is good advice
but I have done dual boot installations on somewhere between 30 and 40
machines and have never lost a single byte of data from windows or had a
problem with the MBR, and I am no where close to being any kind of expert.
All I have ever done is insert disk 1 and use almost all of the defalt
settings and the MBR has always been rewritten flawlessly and never a bit of
trouble booting into linux or windoze afterward. If when you get to the
partitioning part to the installation you choose custom disk partitioning
then click on your 35GB partision and next click on auto allocate you should
be good to go. The 35 GB space should automatically be divided into 3
partisions of roughly the correct size then click on done and follow the
defalts for the rest of the installation you should be good to go. This has
been my recipe for success every time. Never not even 1 time have I had a
seconds trouble with the way the partitions were created or had a seconds
trouble with the MBR, about all I have ever had to do is configure stuff like
modems and sound after the installation was finished. Mandrake has really
made it a nobrainer to get it right first time every time or else I have just
been darn lucky..
You may want to have a look at the installation tutorials at
www.mandrake.com It really is as easy as they make it look.
This is just my personal experance YMMV.
Marc
KM5KW
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Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
