SO, I am new to Linux, less than one month ago I switched over to SuSE 9.1 Linux, and I have fallen in love with it. The applications are awesome, the OS is awesome!! I do not want to be one of those people who just threads LINUX RULES, so I have refrained from doing so, but now I have a question.

I have a dual boot machine (I hate to give specs because I believe it just a waste of space, but since it pertains to the question, I apologize) a AMD Athlon XP "Barton" core 3200+, 1024MB PC 3200 RAM, two Maxtor IDE hard Drives (1-80GB 1-120GB), an ATI ALL-In-wonder-pro 9800, all this is based on the Epox 8RDA+ mobo. I found the BIOS uodate on my motherboard that allows me to do a RAID setup, and I updated so that I could do this. I configured the machine and set it up in a RAID 0 array so that striping could be accomplished, and I did this in both Win XP and SuSE (going with the /hd/0) setting although the HDs are different sizes the Partions for both disks were identical. It was working great, but when I tried to install Cedega last night, things took a turn south (me and my terrible addiction to gaming always ruins good things). The hard drive(s) were(was) not found by cedega or point 2 play. I got an error that stated the machine must be rebooted, and when I did reboot, the BIOS only saw the chip as a 1100 Mhz chip, and only picked up 512Mb RAM. To my horror, I saw that the BIOS setting had been reset. No power surges or anything at the time, not brownouts, no nothing, I don't understand.

I fixed the BIOS settings, and when I restarted everything went fine, but Cedega will not start at all.

Did I break something somehow, has any one ever heard of this happening before? Although things seem to be going fine (minus Cedega), I would like to learn how not to do whatever I may have done.

Also, can someone reccomend a easy to use 64 bit Linus OS?

Thank you, and you guys have been so helpful through me learning, I have used this site primarily to read and learn.

Chris

Raid 0 might not be the best choice for your multi OS setup, considering the amount of time you have invested and since the drives aren't identical. Gaming is also Linux's low point. Your situation is tearing you between two worlds. I would recommend not using RAID and dual-booting to Suse and WinXP. Use WinXP to take advantage of that 9800aiw, but use Linux for everything else. Although you won't be running as fast, you will be running stable, and in the long run, that is what matters more. Hopefully this will give you some direction!

PS Once you get schooled in Linux, upgrade to the AMD64 version of Gentoo, you will see a noticeable performance increase.

Something like this should not happen. Maybe I'm thinking wrong, but I'd check if the RAID driver is stable enough. Try big copying etc to see if you can get the same effect again.

Ugh, another post on the Windows Machine (AMD 64bit E-machines Laptop) I just lost the CPU again, but I think I am now convinced that the dual boot regular ide hard drive configuration may be the way to go afterall. I am just getting frustrated , and I think I need to rethink the benefits of RAID 0 (marginal at best with IDE, better with SATA).

Now, on to the next question that was brought up in reading replies, how do I have to set the hard drive jumpers up if I want the two OS's on different hard drives,i.e. Primary, Slave, CS Enabled? I want to do this to avoid some of the known issues Microsoft has reported with dual boots.

Two other non-related Linux questions:

Is apt4rpms really something that I should not dabble in until I become more comfortable with Linux?

Also, on the 64-bit version of Gentoo- can I still use the same KDE that I use on SuSE 9.1 for that, or is KDE specifically for SuSE?

Thank you, reading your posts and ideas has made migration a LOT easier for a blockhead like me!

Chris

well, for dual booting you just want a master and a slave. you will be given the option of installing lilo (or grub) on the MBR, on the first sector of hda, or on a floppy. assuming you have windows up and running, and you're happy with it, i would just install lilo to the MBR. if you're concerned though, install it on a floppy - then to boot linux you insert the floppy and reboot.

i guess i didn't really answer your question. i'll assume you currently have windows installed on your primary ide hard drive. you want to install linux on your secondary ide hard drive, and dual boot. that's no problem. set the primary drive as master, the secondary as slave, and reboot. you didn't mention whose boot-loader you're using currently, but i would recommend using lilo (one of the linux boot-loaders), and installing it on the MBR (master boot record). most distro's take care of this automatically during installation. basically, you can install linux on whichever hard drive you like, as long as you have a way to boot it.

I wouldn't trust any of the "errors" Microsoft reports for dual-booting. Why would they make it sound easy? There are virtually no problems with dual booting, especially with today's Linux installers which have graphical interfaces and the ability to resize partitions. I would recommend installing your OSes on the 80 as the primary and making the 120 one big FAT32 drive for shared data.

i would too, except that FAT32 has a maximum size limit i believe. can't remember right now what it is (it's 4am and i'm kinda wasted) but i know it's less than 120gb. like 35 of something....i think. but todd's right, that's the setup i'd recommend as well.