I have an empty hard disk that connects by USB. I want to create three partitions on it - two for a FreeBSD and Linux dual-boot (so UFS and ext2 I think?) and a small (1.5G) NTFS partition for storage only.

Ideally the NTFS one would be at the back of the disk. What would be the best way to do this? I've tried reading up on this but I'm confused about compatibility between the BSD labels and MBR, etc. Does windows need the first partition to be NTFS or something like that?

I can either use the FreeBSD install disk or a Linux box to which I have root access. I tried using fdisk on linux and designated the first partition for linux native and one for ntfs, but then the disk became unrecognized on windows.

Thanks!

Certainly not Ext2FS for Linux! At least Ext3FS, although alternatives exist (ReiserFS3, XFS…)

Yves.

I don't know if Windows will boot from a partition at the end of the disk, even if it's a primary partition. Why don't you install Windows first? It will ruin your boot manager anyway. Windows always does that.

For your partitioning, I suggest cfdisk, available in many Linux distros. It's a lot easier, more intuitive.

And don't forget to mark your booting partitions bootable.

On a related note I dual boot Slackware/FreeBSD. Slackware is on my first partition and I use lilo to boot FreeBSD which is on my second partition. When I installed FreeBSD I didn't install a boot loader. Lilo boots FreeBSD very effectively.