Best way to partition for dual boot ...

[ElectrykShock]

Ok, so here's the deal: I have 4 hd's, 2 on the mobo, and two on a promise ultra66. I want to install mandrake 7.2 (which recognizes the controller). When i got to the section of the install where it asks for my partition choices, i was unsure how to proceed ... i have one physical drive completely wiped for linux, but the other 3 drives have win98 and win2k on them ...

which partition option should i use, and what do i need to do to make sure i don't damage or lose my other os's? Thanks! :)

[trekker]

Hmm... since no one else has answered this yet, I'll give it a shot.

IMHO, I think this is a good start:
/swap (equal or double your RAM)
/boot 16M
/ (the rest of your hard disk)

The above is what I think is the least confusing for starters. That's what I started with anyway. IF you are more daring, you can go on to experiment with other configuration e.g. you might want to put a separate partition for /home (soomething like 'My Documents' in windoze) so that your data is not lost if you upgrade or change distro.

I have a /home partition for myself and /home1 for other users (to put a cap on them) and a separate /var for the same reason coz I run a web server and other stuff.

Regarding the other part of your post, read the NHF on triple OS booting.

Hope this helps... :)

[ElectrykShock]

So Mandrake and other distro's handle LILO and other os's the same? I thought that / could only be up to 1.7 gb ... is that outdated info?

[sdunn]

Here is what I did.

I installed a second hard drive and put in my mandrake 7.2 cd. I went through all the stuff and when I got to the hard drives my windows hard drive was already marked as /mnt/windows so I went to my second hard drive and made /boot @23M /swap @256M and a /@1000M and to use rest of space. my hard drive is 10.2 and / is at about 8300M so I would say your info is a little outdated.


So I would make a
/boot with 23M
/swap equal to however much memory you have
/ with the rest of the space on your HD.

This is what I have done. It might not be the best way but it has always worked for me.

[ElectrykShock]

ok, cool ... when i saw the windows drive as /mnt/windows, i figured it would work, but i wanted to be sure ... thanks!

[TheLinuxDuck]

ElectrykShock:

I'm not sure why people always say make the swap partition double your ram. I've got a 256Meg chip in my machine at home, and it almost NEVER touches the swap partition.. in fact, I don't think it ever has.

My advice for swap partitions is to make it 128Meg. You should never need more than that, unless you're running a super powerful web type server.

In fact, if you have 256meg of RAM or more, you could get away with making it 64meg, easy.

I just don't get why people want these huge swap partitions..

To check your system to see how much memory is being used, use the top program.

It will tell you how much memory is being used and how much swap space is being used. I'll bet you'll find the swap numers quite low.

Also, I've found that if you want to dual boot, make a 20 meg /boot partition be the very first partition on the first drive, before the windows partition. That way, you never have to worry about cylinder troubles.

Here is how I would partition my system on a dual boot with 2 hard drives:

primary master (20 gig)
------------------------
/boot 20 meg (linux boot)
C: 6 gig (for windows, and programs)
D: 2 gig (for windows swap file)
E: 12 gig (for audio files and backups and stuff)

primary slave (10 gig)
----------------------------
/ 2.875 gig (root partition)
/home 2 gig (plenty for most things)
/usr 5 gig (binarys and such)
SWAP PARTITION 128 meg (plenty for home use)

Partition magic is great for this sort of thing..

Anyhow, this is just how I would do it. :) You'll soon figure out what you're comfortable with.

[ElectrykShock]

Yeah, i ended up only making swap 128 ... i have 512mb ram, and 256 sounded a little bit high :)

Thanks for the advice ... this was my first attempt at an install, and i think i got really lucky. Everything works! Hard drives, both cdrom and cdr, sound card, tv, video card ... big difference from the first time i tried linux two years ago ...

[trekker]

Hi thelinuxduck, actually I am also not sure why swap space needs to be double the RAM... maybe I should do a search to find out :p

My first distro was RH and the documentation says the swap partition should be equal to the amt of ram or 16MB whichever is higher. But I have also read somewhere saying the swap should be double the ram. That's why I put "/swap (equal or double your RAM)" ;) heh heh... me still a very green newbie..

Personally, I have 256MB ram and my swap is 128MB coz I feel it's not necessary to go up to 256MB.

Okie... time to find out the answers.... :D