coredumped
03-01-2002, 05:28 AM
I'm lost... I haven't played around with Linux in over a year, so half the stuff I used to know, I don't anymore. So now that I'm considering dual booting Windows XP Professional and Slackware Linux onto a brand new 120GB drive, I want to partition it in such a way that I can segment the data... but don't know whether my design will work or not.
Here's the deal...
I want to have 3 Windows partitions. One for the OS itself, one for all my programs, and one for all my data files. As to how I'll configure Windows XP to recognize all this, I don't know... but I won't worry about that yet.
Then I want 3 Linux partitions. One as a 'boot' partition where the kernel lies, One that is the 'root' directory. One as the /home partition.
I also have a seperate drive that I plan on using for my Linux & Windows swap partition, as well as other cross-platform data storage.
Now, when I last used Linux, I remember that the kernel had to be located within the first 1024 cylinders of the drive, so I would likely put the Linux boot partition just after the Windows XP OS partition, which would only be a few GB anyway. After the Linux boot partition would be the partition for the Windows programs... and so on. My fear is that Windows will see this partition (maybe 5 MB big), and want to reformat it each time. I don't even want it to see it. Can anyone tell me whether this will happen or not, and if so, what to do about it?
Secondly, can I even partition a drive with that many partitions? I *think* you can because my old setup on my current (8.4GB) drive had multiple partitions for Linux, but the issue there was that I had never embedded a Linux partition between two Windows partitions before.
Thirdly, and this may be a little off topic, but the new 120GB drive will be run on a Promise Ultra100 ATA100 PCI card since my motherboard only supports ATA33 (yes I know, it's old). My concern here is that my system BIOS won't be able to find the 120GB drive as a bootable drive. Furthermore, should I put my existing drive on the ATA100 controller (it's only ATA33 anyway)? If not, then might there be a way to perhaps put Windows and Linux on the 120GB drive, but boot from the 8.5 on the on-board IDE controller? Essentially, I'd put the /boot partition on the smaller drive and have LILO load from the 120GB drive. For Linux this would probably work, but my fear is with Windows and how stubborn it is.
As you can see, I'm kinda all over the place with this topic. Any help, guidance, or warnings of other potential issues anyone might be able to provide would be greatly appreciated.
Thank You,
- coredumped.
Here's the deal...
I want to have 3 Windows partitions. One for the OS itself, one for all my programs, and one for all my data files. As to how I'll configure Windows XP to recognize all this, I don't know... but I won't worry about that yet.
Then I want 3 Linux partitions. One as a 'boot' partition where the kernel lies, One that is the 'root' directory. One as the /home partition.
I also have a seperate drive that I plan on using for my Linux & Windows swap partition, as well as other cross-platform data storage.
Now, when I last used Linux, I remember that the kernel had to be located within the first 1024 cylinders of the drive, so I would likely put the Linux boot partition just after the Windows XP OS partition, which would only be a few GB anyway. After the Linux boot partition would be the partition for the Windows programs... and so on. My fear is that Windows will see this partition (maybe 5 MB big), and want to reformat it each time. I don't even want it to see it. Can anyone tell me whether this will happen or not, and if so, what to do about it?
Secondly, can I even partition a drive with that many partitions? I *think* you can because my old setup on my current (8.4GB) drive had multiple partitions for Linux, but the issue there was that I had never embedded a Linux partition between two Windows partitions before.
Thirdly, and this may be a little off topic, but the new 120GB drive will be run on a Promise Ultra100 ATA100 PCI card since my motherboard only supports ATA33 (yes I know, it's old). My concern here is that my system BIOS won't be able to find the 120GB drive as a bootable drive. Furthermore, should I put my existing drive on the ATA100 controller (it's only ATA33 anyway)? If not, then might there be a way to perhaps put Windows and Linux on the 120GB drive, but boot from the 8.5 on the on-board IDE controller? Essentially, I'd put the /boot partition on the smaller drive and have LILO load from the 120GB drive. For Linux this would probably work, but my fear is with Windows and how stubborn it is.
As you can see, I'm kinda all over the place with this topic. Any help, guidance, or warnings of other potential issues anyone might be able to provide would be greatly appreciated.
Thank You,
- coredumped.