Hi,
I am DONE with winblows. I have a 120 gig WD HD that I would like to partition into 2, and Install Fedora so that it can dual boot with my current XP (Family uses XP) and will not remove any current data.

I am also looking to do this so that I can restore my HD to its original, because I have heard that if you do this incorrectly, yo can infact mess up the hard drive.

Could someone please point me to an accurate info site that will show me how to do these things?

I was thinking I will need partition magic to create the other partition. I have the 3 ISOs on my XP machine.'

Thank you for taking the time to read my post! I am a keen person wanting to get into Linux.

Burn the isos... Install...

Done. You configure everything as you go

So i whip the CDs in and from the installation, I can create a new partition and install it on the new partition? And then am I able to delete that partition if and when I need to? what would the partition be called (eg. NTFS, FAT...)?

If fedorah is as good as the other distros. Yes, just put em in, resize the old partition, and install. Suse even resizes for you..

and how do I go about deleting that partition if i have to? Is there a special way to do that, just in case i have to resort back to winblows?

i don't think fedora can edit your windows partitions (i know suse can....). make free space with partition magic, then install ferdora

i dont actually mean edit. what I mean is if i install linux, can i return the HD to a FAT partition.

what i would do is:

1) Use partition magic and shorten your windows partition

2) Use partition magic again and create a d:\ drive, if you want ntfs or fat32, its ur choice

3) Get norton ghost and make a backup and save you backup to your d:\

4) Install Fedora on existing free space on /dev/hda

5) Linux and is kewl and you'll neva look back

Ciao ciao

What i did....

1. Install WindowsXP (or already installed). Get SuSE 9 Pro's 5 CDs of alternative OS luvin with your fav Bittorrent client.

2. Install and use Partition Magic to resize the WinXP partition down, leaving 10gb or more of un-allocated space at the END of the drive.

(if your BIOS has the option to set IRQ priorities to the PCI slots instead of AUTO/PNP, doing that now will really smooth things)

3. Install SuSE 9. It'll suck up that empty space on the drive just right.

Be sure and change the BootLoader to LILO, from the default of GRUB. Leave the MBR untouched. Be sure and pick detailed software selection to pick all the goodies and GNOME.

My experiences have been great so far, have 2 Athlons setup that way now. SuSE has lots to play with and it's pretty zippy on old AMD 1gig and AMD1800XP.

I appreciate your time. So this is what im gonna do -

1 - Partition my 120 gig in to 2 60 gigs (approx) - using partition magic
2 - put in the fedora CD 1 - follow the install.
3 - somewhere in the install i guess i am able to convert the newly created partition into a 'linux' partition.
4 - Slowly convince my family that Linux is the way to go and get them to remove linux.

Questions!
~ When I use partition magic, is there a specific file allocation type that it is supposed to be?
~ Say i wanna get rid of fedora...how do I do that?
~ Screenshots for installation and doing the partition thing?

Thanks guys. I like the Linux community a lot more than any windows forums out there!

and get them to remove Linux? What? Pardon me? lol

NO NOT WAT I MEANT...I meant XP...im sure u all gathered that...so is this the correct steps to take?