Hi,

I have two HHDs in my PC. My plan is to delete all the partitions on the second drive, which I use for storage and back up. Then create one partition NTFS, leaving enough room unpartitioned for a Linux install (my first try). The goal being to end up with a dual-boot machine, XP and Ubuntu.

So will the Ubuntu installer recognize the unpartitioned space, and lead me through the steps to format it correctly for a dual boot install?

I was hoping to avoid manually partitioning and formatting for the Linux partition.

Also, how much space should I leave for the Linux partition? I will want to share files between XP and Ubuntu, and understand I can do that on one of my NTFS partitions. Space is not an issue, and I would rather be safe and have more than I need, than end up short of space later.

Thanks for any help.

Nothing to be worried about. In fact, if you would like to have an ntfs partition on the same drive, manual partitioning is your only option. If you instruct the installer to do the partitioning itself, it will take all of your HD.

What you can do, however, is create partitions using XP. Then start the install cd and go for manual/custom partitioning.
Or slip in the cd and make the partitions using the installer (select custom partitioning). Just select the proper HD, click in the empty space and make partitions. Format as ext3 or xfs, format the smaller partition as linux-swap. The next step is assigning mount points; if you make only two or three partitions, the installer should be smart enough to suggest the proper scheme. Nothing is definitive until you click apply so you can always go back and make adjustments. As long as you make sure you did not select your first drive, nothing bad can happen anyway.

I suggest making three partitions:
1 swap partition that is twice the size of your RAM (for example, 512 MB RAM= 1024MB(=1GB)swap)
1 / partition (=the system files): about 10GB
1 root partition (=your personal data): as large as you need it to be; can be skipped if you prefer to use ntfs to share all your data

The Ubuntu partitioner will allow you to delete existing partitions--or make new ones from unpartitioned space.

For sharing with Windows, consider also ext2fsd. This is a driver that allows Windows to see ext2 and ext3 partitions (read and write).

Thank You.

So if I leave 40 gig unpartitioned, then partition just what I need as I go along, I could install 3 different Linux distros?

Could you explain the benefits to having a partition ext2fsd compared to having all data on NFTS and having Linux reading writing to that?

Thanks

40GB--you could probably fit 5 or 6 distros in there.

The conventional wisdom is that writing to NTFS from Linux can be unreliable. The bulletproof approach is a FAT32 share partition, but there you can't set permissions.

I spend 98% of my time on Linux, so I like all the data on Linux partitions.

BTW--ext2fsd is not a partition type--it is a driver that lets windows access ext2/3

I imagine I am making too big a deal about this, but just trying to plan ahead as much as I can.

All I am thinking of now is the hope I can migrate to doing most of my computing in Linux. Of course all my data is on/in NTFS drives. So when accessing music, home video, pictures, etc., is this even a concern? If I want to play music, edit pictures stored in NTFS, will I be able to access all that in Linux?

I pull up a picture in Linux (from a NTFS partition), edit it, do whatever, then save it to the NTFS again, I am doing what you are suggesting is unreliable?

Right now I can set up the drive anyway I want to, and then copy my data to it. So better to set it up as ext3 with the driver for windows to access it as well?

Sorry if I am making this more difficult than it needs to be.

Thanks again.

Well, there's no doubt that he older approach (using the ntfs module) was pretty unreliable but I'm getting perfectly reliable results using ntfs-3g nowadays. Then again, pixellany may know more so the decision is up to you. Why not see for yourself? I suppose you still have ntfs on your first hard drive. Install ntfs-3g and check whether you can access your data on that drive without a problem. If all is fine, you can stick with ntfs and format the rest of your second hard drive as ntfs; if not, you can still format it as ext3.

If you plan to do most of your work on Linux, then I would suggest that your best bet would be to put all of your data on an ext3 partition. This way, Linux will have no issues. You can use the ext2fsd driver in Windows to access the data if necessary.

If you plan to do some work on Linux and some on Windows, then put your data on a FAT32 partition. Both windows and Linux can read and write without additional drivers. However, you will lose some flexibility with permissions, etc.

--Ian

linux by default can normally read NTFS but not write to it,
there is a driver to write to NTFS but its considered unstable at the moment

Why does everybody keep saying that ntfs-3g is unstable? It was declared stable more than two months ago ...

I am now dual-booting XP and pclinuxos.

I wanted to try a KDE DE, so decided to try the pclinuxos. Now before I get to work on that I may try to set up another distro, probably the Ubuntu, so if I mess anything up I will not have lost any work other than the installation.

Many thanks for helping mme through this.

BTW, I made a asmall linux partition for data so I can experiment between the different options, ext3, fat32, ntfs.

I am sure I'll be back!