What is a partition?

[B_R_Y_A_N]

Will someone please tell me what a partiton is? I bought Linux the other day and it's really hard to install! :eek:

[Frawg]

A partition is a segment on your hard drive..

imagine a book

Lots of **** going on in a book.

lets say you want to seperate the book, using bookmarks...

slip it in there,.. there...

ok
now,
information is stored in the first part of the book the second part the third part...

partitions are a way of breakin your hard drive up into segments..

peaze
frawg

[B_R_Y_A_N]

Thanks man! :D

[aph3x]

partitioning a hard disk is like dividing cake into pieces: say you have albert, earl, bertha, and helga, and they all like chocolate cake. however, they all like chocolcate cake to a different degree, so they split it up differently. albert takes 40%, earl takes 15%, bertha takes 20%, and helga takes 25%.

the same analogy holds true for a hard disk: you need to divide the "cake" into different sections where the percentages of cake represent the amount of memory on a hard disk... :)

i know, i know... cheeeezy analogy :p

for linux, youll need to at least set up two partitions, one for your swap and one for your root. the swap size can normally be set to your amount of RAM * 2, and use the rest of the disk for your root partition if you so desire (unless of course, youre dual-booting). hope that helps out :D

[B_R_Y_A_N]

I am trying to do a dual boot... how much of the "cake" does windows ME take up? :confused:

[mychl]

in me, go to properties of your c drive, that will tell you how much space it is using. That would be the minimum size of the partition you need for ME. A good Idea is to get a hold of some imaging software, image your windows to another hard drive. Then wipe out your first drive, partition it with linux and swap at the beginning of the drive, then replace the last part of your drive with the image you made of your windows stuff. That will enable you to use lilo to dual boot.

Lets sat you have a 20gig drive. make the first linux partition like 6gig, then a 256Mb partition for your swap, and the rest would be for windows. But it dependes, once you get more involved with linux, you can reverse those sizes and have say 6gigs for windows and the rest for linux.

When you install linux, put the boot loader in the MBR, then when you boot it will ask you which OS you want to boot. If your linux partition is past the 1024 block of your hard drive it won't work, thats why you should put linux first. But you could just make a small linux partition thzt mounts at /boot at the beginning of the drive, then put the rest of linux at the end. There are many ways to do this, but this should give you a better idea.

good luck :D

[ 08 March 2001: Message edited by: mychl ]

[B_R_Y_A_N]

thanks a lot...
do you have ICQ or AIM so i can stay in touch with you? I don't really like e-mail..

[B_R_Y_A_N]

Oh yeah... What is a MBR? :confused:

[DMR]

The Master Boot Record (MBR) is the information in the first sector of any hard disk or diskette that identifies how and where an operating system is located so that it can be booted (loaded) into the computer's RAM. The Master Boot Record is also sometimes called the "partition sector" or the "master partition table" because it includes a table that locates each partition that the hard disk has been formatted into.
In addition to this table, the MBR also includes a program that reads the boot sector record of the partition containing the operating system to be booted into RAM. In turn, that record contains a program that loads the rest of the operating system into RAM.

-definition courtesy of www.whatis.com (http://www.whatis.com)

[ 08 March 2001: Message edited by: DMR ]

[B_R_Y_A_N]

wow, the MDR does a lota ****.. hehe
Thanks.. I'm gonna go play Quake 2 now
THANK YOU EVERYONE WHO HELPED ME TODAY

I gtg, peace! :D :D :D :D

[Whipping Boy]

Some advice before you get flamed:
ALWAYS read documentation, search the web, forum archives, etc. for an answer before you post a question somewhere. It's commonly referred to as "RTFM"ing (Read The ****ing Manual), and it's not a compliment.

Just a heads-up on some courtesy to keep in mind.