Jack wrote:
It tends to make me wary but how does one learn without "fooling around." :-)
I have now abandoned Drive Image for Paragon Drive Backup 6.0 which comes highly recommended. It even uses Linux on it's recovery CD. I do *not* want to have to depend on Window's repair function.
Excellent move.
I gave up on Partition Magic (and Drive Image) around Linux years ago for the better Paragon Hard Disk Manager product (it includes Drive Backup and some other useful utilities.) (I'm not associated with them, just a happy user.)
One of the problems with Partition Magic is that it expects the partitions to end on a cylinder boundary like Windows does. Linux and other operating systems don't have this limitation and can end a partition anywhere (and M$ OS's will install and work fine when installed into a partition not ending on a cylinder boundary.) That's why sometimes mixing partition utilities can cause issues. Best bet is to stick to one, Mandrake's is a good one, or if you need one to use in Windows take a look at the Paragon product. I haven't had issues mixing Paragon with Mandrake's DiskDrake, but Paragon does include a Linux version of it's partition manager utility on the install CD if you're nervous.
As to blowing out your MBR...
Here's what I have done for years:
Use Paragon or your preferred partition manager to create your partition structure, but don't do any formatting yet. You can use DiskDrake if you get to the partitioning part of the install and then abort it.
Create a small FAT16 or FAT32 partition at the beginning of the drive. You're going to install XOSL here, but if you want a working DOS installation, you can install it here too. I sometimes have a need to keep one around for software that hasn't been updated and probably won't ever be. 100 megs is plenty unless you know you need more. For XOSL alone 10 megs will do. Then create the Windows partition, your extended partition, and any logicals you need for your favorite Linux partitioning scheme, but don't format yet. At the very least you'll need one for the main Linux file system (and probably you should look at separating some of the tree, there is plenty of info out there on partitioning schemes for Linux), and one for Linux swap.
Get your Windows installation working next. Let it install into the primary partition you created for it and do the NTFS formatting. Then complete the install and get it working.
Once you have Windows working use it to format the small partition you created at the beginning of the drive as FAT16 or FAT32. After this is complete I generally set Windows to hide the partition so it won't grab a drive letter. If you need a FAT32 partition for data interchange, put it somewhere else, in your extended partition before or after your Linux partitions would be a good place, and create it before installing Windows along with the other partitions. Use Windows to format this partition if you decided you needed to create one (I generally don't.)
Next grab XOSL from www.xosl.org and install it into the small partition you created at the beginning of the drive. XOSL hasn't been changed for a while, but it works flawlessly. It is a boot manager and loader, but because of it's features can't fit in the MBR alone. You can install it into a hidden partition if you'd like, but I generally use a FAT32 partition and install DOS too. It'll set the partition as a Novell type if you want it hidden, though you can't do anything else with the partition then. Install instructions are on the site, and installing is a snap. One of the nice things that XOSL will do is create backups of the MBR whenever it is changed. You can then install these if needed again later on. You'll have a copy if you ever have an MBR oops. From the menu of XOSL you can choose to hide a particular partition depending on which OS you're going to boot, and you can manage your operating system boot menu with ease.
Once installed, set up the menu to boot Windows and test it. (XOSL will have a copy of the Windows MBR it will use to boot from now on.)
Once you have all this done, install Linux. Make sure to choose to install lilo or grub into the *boot sector* of the Linux partition and not the *MBR* when you do your Linux install. Look under advanced if you don't see this setting in the bootloader section of the Linux install.
Once Linux is installed, add your Linux partition to the XOSL boot list. It'll be easy to do from a graphical setup screen of XOSL listing your partitions.
Select Linux and test the boot.
I've installed multiple Linux distros using XOSL and had separate swap partitions, hiding the ones not in use from each other. The XOSL docs describe how to hide partitions you want to keep separate from each other for multiple distro installations prior to actually doing the install. It is actually a snap to do. This way they won't try to use existing compatible partitions or upgrade them.
I have had multiple Windows versions, several Linux distros, and Solaris installed on a single hard drive using this scenario. (*Always* create the Solaris slices (Sunspeak for partitions) last if you ever need to mix it with other operating systems.) Keeping operating systems separate and some oblivious of others is easy.
Even without a complex install, having the MBR safe might make this scheme attractive. When you change your Linux distro, it never writes to the MBR and can't foul up your M$ OS. It works across multiple drives, too.
I've also done a lot of dual-boot installs using lilo as the bootloader and not had issues either.
Rick Kunath
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