On Sunday 30 September 2001 15:59, Dave Sherman wrote:
> On Sunday 30 September 2001 08:11 am, Doug Anderson wrote:
> > Does the Linux utility that creates the partitions when LM is installed
> > over an existing Windows partition care what is in the Windows
> > partition? She would prefer to wait a few weeks and buy the new PC with
> > XP. Will I have a problem because the contents of the Windows partition
> > will be newer than the Linux utility that resizes it?
>
> To answer your question, DiskDrake (the partitioning utility) should have
> no trouble working with your Windows hard drive, as long as the existing
> filesystem is FAT16 or FAT32 (DOS- and Win9x-formatted). If you get a
> system with WinXP preinstalled, it may have the NTFS filesystem
> ("NT-formatted", since XP is based on Windows NT/2000), and I don't know
> if DiskDrake can play with NTFS.
>
> I know in the past Dell has offered NT workstations and servers with FAT16
> partitions as an option (usually, C is FAT16 and is only used for the OS,
> and D is NTFS, used for data and applications), so you may be able to get
> your XP system setup the same way. I don't know if Gateway will do this.
>
> Last time I checked, NT4 could not handle FAT32 partitions, thus the FAT16
> option offered by Dell. I don't know if Win2000/WinXP has been improved to
> handle FAT32.
>
> Even if DiskDrake *is* able to work with your NTFS partition to resize it,
> you may run into problems later because at this time, NTFS write support
> in the Linux kernel is experimental, and I think Mandrake is still only
> including read-only support for NTFS in their stock kernel. What this
> means is, you will be able to read from your NTFS partition, but not save
> files to it, when you are in Linux. Or, you can recompile your kernel with
> full read-write support for NTFS, however this is considered experimental,
> and you could actually damage your files by trying to write/save them to
> the NTFS partition.
>
> DaveNT Write support is experimental for NTFS 4--the reason is that NTFS is a Microsoft trade secret, and what has been done has been done by careful guesswork. Win2K uses NTFS5 -- not even read support Win XP uses YET ANOTHER VARIATION -- not even read support And there may be little or no hope of ever getting any read support, because the DMCA might be used to protect the filesystem from reverse engineering. Civileme
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