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I need some plain talk on "how to" partition my hard drives for a dual boot system - Windows XP, and a Linux distro to be determined.) I have read umpteen articles, and have found most to be out of date or very obscure for a noobe like me. My initial thoughts are to give each OS a drive of its own (80GB each). I would also like to be able to back up each to the other (3d party util). My main confusion is about how much space to allocate for what. Also, is there a way to keep assigned drive names D and E for CDROM and DVD Burner? Any and all suggestions /directions welcomed. Thanks in advance for your help......rt
PS: A recommended distro would also be appreciated.
For a newbie a distro like SuSe Redhat or Mandrake is good.
As for partitioning Two drives would make your life simple
I'd make 2 partitions on your linux drive one for your kernel
and one for everything else so
1 Partition of about 128MB
1 Partition the rest of the drive
In Linux there are no confusing drive letters.
Drives are named as they are arranged in your computer.
Partitions of the drive have a number appended to the
device name.
hda is the first IDE harddrive
hda1 is the first partition on the first harddrive
hda2 is the second partition on the first harddrive
hdb is the second harddrive
hdb2 is the second partition on the second harddrive
On linux you don't have "My Computer" you have /
/ is a directory (equivelent of a folder) like any other.
It is the top of the file system everything, all the files
on the computer are in /
So as you can see you can connect up to 4 Devices.
The Master/Slave configuration of the drives is commonly done by little jumpers on the actual drives.
Sometimes the cable can also determine which drive is Master or slave, in which case both drives should be set to Cable Select (CS)
Now the computer wants to know how to tell the devices apart on each cable, so one of them is the Master, and the other one the Slave.
So now the computer knows which drive is which.
Now Linux also wants to know which drive is which.
So eg peanut uses the nameing like this
kinda makes sense, no ?
now because linux keeps all device related files in the dev folder you can access those drives by using eg /dev/hda for the IDE0 Master.
Ok, now linux knows how to get to the drive, now it wants to get to partitions. So why not just give them numbers from 1 to x ? Well that's what linux does. So the first partition on /dev/hda is /dev/hda1.
The second one is /dev/hda2. The 3rd partition on /dev/hdc is /dev/hdc3.
Yeah, would be nice if it worked that way. But there is a lil extra thanks to partition types.
If everyone would just use primary partitions it would all be easy. The numbering would go just by the partition number. BUT there is also this thing called extended partition. It allows you to make a partition which in itself can hold extra partitions(logical ones). That's where it gets weird with partition numbering. So what numbers will these partitions get ?
Let's assume we use /dev/hdc (the master on IDE1) .
Your first four partitions are normally "reserved" for primary or extended partitions.
So that accounts for /dev/hdc1 to /dev/hdc4 .
Let us assume we have one primary partition and one extended partition which has 3 logical partitions in it.
Now the primary partition is /dev/hdc1, the extended partition /dev/hdc2.
/dev/hdc3 and 4 get skipped (remember reserved for primary and extended)
So the 3 logical partitions have to make do with /dev/hdc5 onwards.
So we'd end up with the following
/dev/hdc :
/dev/hdc1..............primary
/dev/hdc2..............extended
/dev/hdc5.................logical
/dev/hdc6.................logical
/dev/hdc7.................logical
So one number for the extended partition (/dev/hdc2) and then the following numbers for the logical partitions in it (/dev/hda5, ect)
For starters Redhat or Mandrake would be the easiest to install. You should check the different distro websites to see if they support SATA drives. Also Mandrake and Redhat have their install documentation online so you can read and study beforehand.
If you want an entire drive devoted to linux it would be the best way to go. For first time users let the installer autopartition. Once your more familar with linux you can partition as you like.
There aren't any drive designations like windows. The filesystem is a tree and all devices mounted are branches. An analogy would be that linux has only the c: drive. Every directory is referenced from the c:\. but in linux it is the / (root). Each drive would be a directory from /. Redhat and Mandrake mount cdrom drives to /mnt/cdrom, /mnt/cdrom1 etc.
Lots for me to digest there! Appreciate answers so far. But my machine uses a SATA Raid 0 config. IDE0=DVD ROM, IDE!=DVD Burner. In windows my C HD = 155GB, D=DVD ROM, and E=DVD Burner. How recognized by Linux?
Did you follow the link I posted? I probably confused things a little with my analogy. I guess so. Let me rephrase if windows were to only have a c: drive then all additional devices would be referenced from c:\. So linux uses / instead of c:\. Then, for example Mandrake would mount the first CDROM detected to /mnt/cdrom.
All hardware is assigned a device ID. These devices IDs are located in the /dev directory. As an example a CDROM reader connected to the IDE secondary master will be /dev/hdc.
Michaelk...yes, read article 2x, will read more...great article..If I'm beginning ti understand, on my machine: /dev/hda = first hard drive, /dev/hdb = my second hard drive...am I right/
Yes. I think you would benefit from purchasing a linux book or visiting your local library. I'm from the old school and having a reference helped me out when I first started learning about linux.
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