Partitioning drives to split Linux and windows with windows already on computer.
 

I have been trying to get red hat linux 9.0 on my computer for about a week now, but everytime i am about to install i have to do one more thing to put it on my computer which already has windows. I want to partition my drives so i am able to dual boot the computer with both RH linux and Windows. I used partition magic because i have heard that the partition tool supllied with the linux disk sometimes damages your drives. Anyways, i tried to use partition magic, and it says that i have 2.2 gigs free on my c and 786 mb free on my d, yet when i try to partition it says that if it takes space from the c and d drive to make an e drive all it will have is 1.6 gigs of space. This is not enough for linux i know, but i still tried to partition it thiunking i could skip out on some of the linux appliciations i wouldn't need. After partitioning it, I restarted my computer, and it went itno DOS to partition the drives. It tried to partition them but said there was an error. I then loaded windows, and it was back to how it always was. How do i partition it to work!!!!?????? I think these forums are awesome, thanks for all the previous and futures help!

-mike

Make sure you're using Partition Magic to set up that 2.2 gig and 700meg partitions as free space. After they're "Free Space" start the RedHat 9 installation disc. You should be able to select the 2.2 gig amount of free space for your /boot and / partitions, and the 700 megs as your "swap" partition.

In short: don't worry about making an "E" drive. Linux doesn't work that way. Just clear up those partitions as free space, and you can use it accordingly during the RedHat 9 installation.

Thank u for the response but i am hesitant to do this because wont all my windows file be erased if i put linux on the 2.2 g of free space with the other part of the drive being for windows. I thought that was the main reason for me partitioning and making a new drive.

when there is free space, RH will create a new partition there and install itself there. It won't touch the windows 'drives' which are just partitions. What Sometimes is suggesting is exactly what you should do. The potentially dangerous thing is to let a linux installer free up the space from an existing windows partition but this is not what you would be doing. Making free space means that that space won't be available to windows - when you boot windows and look at how much free space C: has, you'll see that it's a lot less than it used to be.

Exactly. :)

Don't think in terms of "drives" like in Windows.

Just think in terms of "space"

Since it's just "free space" it won't touch anything your Windows install uses. RedHat will happily install on just the "free" space.

Thank you soo much, it worked!!!!!!!!!!