Space requrement on 1st partition on HD drive for dual (Fedora and Win XP) booting
 

Dear viewers.

I have heard that I need to install the Fedora 2 on the first 7-8 GB of my hard disk. Is it true??

What I want is: I want to install two OSs in my PC. Windows XP and fedora 2. To speak the truth, I already have it. But the problem is I am now seriously lacking space in my C drive. I have partitioned my Harddisk such a way that two OS resides on the first 8 GB (4GB each).

So is it possible to install the Fedora 2 on other partitiones of the HDD instead of the first 8 GB(I'll be able to increase my C drive then). I wish I could make my question more understandable to you.

XP must be installed on front partition of the harddrive, and Linux on the back half.
What program did you use to partition your harddrive?
What size harddrive do you have?
And last use Fedora core 4 instead of 2 , it is greatly improved.
Please respond on the two question above and I can help you further.

Jim

Thanks for your quick response!
 

Size of my Harddisk is 40GB.
I used the partitioning utility (don't know exactly the name) provided with the Windows XP cd. I installed XP on the first 4GB and kept the other 4GB(of the first 8GB) unpartitioned at that time.Also partitioned the left 36GB. Then, when I installed Fedora 2 later on, used disk druid for that purpose.

Will that partitioning program allow for resizing?
You can resize the XP partition to include the other 4gig of the 8gig.

Jim

Last half??
 

I'm not sure, but as far as I know the partitioning tool doesn't allow one to resize the partition. If I decide to allocate 4gig of Fedora to XP I'll need to reinstall XP.

What if I format my whole HDD and start all over again? I think I'll be doing so using Partition Magic. Do I need to install fedora on my first 8gig? What you meant by saying Fedora to be installed in the last half??

-Ishtiaque

Personally I'd want a bigger / partition than 4GB for Fedora. Mind you, I've never used Fedora 2 and I'm sure the distro has grown since that was released.

Not sure that it matters which part of your drive Windows goes on, but you'll definitely want to install Windows first, and Fedora second. The way I tend to install is to boot the Windows install CD, delete all partitions on the drive and create a partition of about 8GB into which I install Windows. Once Windows is installed, I then go into computer management in Windows and create the partitions I want for Fedora - they are not formatted or mounted or anything at this point, just blank partitions (again about 8GB for / and separate partitions for whatever your other requirements might be). Once this is done, I then boot using the Fedora install disc and choose the pre-created partitions. All the Fedora install does is to format these partitions before using them. Linux purists will probably tell me off for doing it this way, but I've quite a bit of trouble with Fedora's setup partitioning tool in the past.

Thank you for your suggestion. I followed the same method for my current settings. But as I want to increase the C drive now, I don't want to distroy my current partitions . I am deleting all unnecessary files and folders and trying to free up my D drive. My intention is to use the Partition Magic tool to concat the the freed space with C drive. If I need to re-install the XP and fedora-that's not a problem. But I am/ was unsure if it's ok to install the fedora in any part of the HDD instead of the first 8GB.

My current parttions are as follows: (first to last order, approximately): Total 40GB
C drive:first 4GB
fedora: next 4GB
D drive: 23GB
E drive: 9GB

I want it as follows:

C: 8GB
D:15GB
E: 9GB(unchanged)
fedora: 8GB (anywhere??)

So I'll need to free up 8GB from D drive and give C and fedora 4GB each.

Now the questions remaining are:
1. Does Partition Magic actually assign/ concates freed space from D drive, or just does it logically?
2. Are we sure we can install Fedora anywhere/ any part of the HDD?
3. Where can I find fedora 3/4? What Maximum space do they require? Is 8 GB enough?

Thanks.

1. I'm afraid I've never used Partition Magic, so can't answer that question.
2. I am pretty sure that you can install Fedora Core 3 and upwards anywhere on the disk, because I have an install of FC3 that starts about 40GB onto a disc, and an install of FC4 that starts about 10GB on. Don't know about earlier version of Fedora.
3. You can download versions of Fedora at fedora.redhat.com. I recommend using rsync or Bit Torrent if you can use either, as the download is much less likely to get corrupted with them. Maximum space required is probably around the region of 10GB, but you'd need to install a lot of packages to reach that maximum. I have FC4 on a 10GB partition here, and only about half of it is used, even though I have Gnome, KDE, OpenOffice and a number of other packages installed. So, in my experience, 8GB is probably enough.

Dear all,

Since my last mail, I had only one OS in my PC. It was windows XP and the C drive I creaded was 10GB. I left next 4GB unpartitioned for later Fedora core 2 installation. Last night I tried about 4 hours to install the fedora 2 and got some peculier warning messages. Here's a description about what i did:

At first:

Just used my fedora 2 cd to boot my PC and start configuraing my installation. As soon as I selected the "language" setting and clicked "next" button I got the following warning:


"Unable to align partition property. This probably means that another partitioning tool generated an incorrect partitioning table,because it didn't have the correct BIOS geometry. It is safe to ignore, but ignoring may cause (fixable)problems with some boot loaders "

I clicked "ignore" button and started partioning useing disk druid. But as soon as i clicked the "next" button after that I got the following error message:

"Could not allocate requested partitions. Partitioning failed: could not allocate cylinder- based partitions".

Then I decided to give it a fresh start by reinstalling windows xp and trying again the fedora 2 installation. The result was the same warning message followed by the error message.

I tried in several ways but everytime the result was the same. I even tried changeing my BIOS setting from [Auto] to [User defined/Manual ] hoping the cylinder based partition will proceed. IN VAIN!!!

Lastly decided to go back to my original configuration as:

First 4GB to windows and C:
next 4GB to fedora 2.
Surprisingly this time the first warning message disappeared but I got the
error message still stopping me from installation.

As out of curiosity I skipped allocating "swap" space the error message was gone!!
It only showed a waring message saying the performance degradation might happen due to absence of swap space. I was able to install the fedora 2 at last without a swap space!!

Now, do you have any clue about the whole matter?? What might be the problem??
Here's my BIOS (ASUS motherboard, AWARD BIOS utility) setting:

TYPE [AUTO]]
Cylinder [1024]
Head [255]
Sector [63]
CHS capacity 8422MB
Maximum LBA capacity 41110MB

Thanks for your look at my question. I apolozise for the long mail.

Problem solved!!

One of my friend, Sayeed came up to help me. He discovered that I was trying to have more than 4 partitions in my HDD , namely
1. C:
2.Extended partition having D: and E:,
3. /(root for fedora)
4. /boot and
5. Swap

He informed me that I cannot partition my HDD in more than 4 primary partitions. That's why it was showing the error message and was not proceeding. As a result when I had partitioned my HDD without 'swap', it let me install.

Then he suggested to use LVM partition (which is a logical partition- like extended partition in windows, I guess) and subdivide that in two so that the total number of primary partition remains 4.

So the resulting partition is: (total 40GB)
1./boot (100MB)
2. LVM partition [ having / (root) and swap (aprox. 6GB)]
3. Windows c(10 GB)
4. Extended partition (holding D and E) (aprox 24 GB)

SO, at last I got my C drive large enough and also got the answer that Fedora can be installed anywhere in the HDD, not necessarily in first 8GB.

Thank you all.