20 gig drive....

4 gigs windows OS
4 gigs ext2
12 gigs general vfat for AVI films etc...
obviously 12 gigs aint got no room for mp3's, hence my 40 gig dedicated mp3 server.

seemed liek aood idea, as i would've had the 1024 issue...

mind you i am running the mp3 drive on vfat too... which is bad i know... but that way i can easily remove the drive and put in anyone elses machine and copy gig's at a time back and forth and then stick it back in.... i guess i'll copy that over to ext3 but then i'll need another 40 gig drive to copy it to... i'm a poor student.. pity me. but then don't pity me tooo much, cos at least i'm not cornish.

It can't be as easy as installing linux to it's own drive and then simply specify which drive to boot from when comp is started? I understand creating a bootdisk to start linux and I also understand only one os can run at a time.

Do i need partitioning software to partition my current drive that windows is on too add linux to it or will linux do that for me?

you have to make the windows partition smaller, making more space at the end of the drive, where you can put a big chunk of linux in.

like i said, mandrake will definitely do all that, i'd expect redhats diskdruid does as well. if not you'll have programs like 'fips' included on the cd to do thejob for you.

IN THEORY it is that easy. but most problems just arise from people not knowing how to do it, rather than it going wrong.

also under mandrake you don't need to partition the drive at all, as you can install it into a huuuge file in windows, but it's a bit slower that way.

Thanks Chris...... I feel much less intimidated now. So basically I can just pop in th RH disks and start doing an install as my machine sits right now? I have a minimum of 8 gigs for linux to use.

My biggest concern is to keep the windows os functional no matter what i do with linux.

There is another program I would recommend to resize partitions, and it just so happens to be free!

The program is called PRESIZER, and fits on a floppy quite nicely, even with a full windoze 98 SE bootdisk on it!

go to Presizer Download Page to obtain a zipped copy.

It's nice and easy to use, if a little basic.

Remember to read any instructions it has to offer first.

:smash: