I have a dell inspiron 8100 notebook and I am wanting to load up linux to dual boot with XP which is already installed on the drive. The hard drive is 55GB and I also connected, through firewire, an external drive of 160GB, which is NTFS formatted. I am considering either Mandrake 9.1 or Redhat 9.0. I understand that linux can only read NTFS but that it can write to FAT32. I'm trying to figure out how to work this the best way. I would like to have both operating systems on the main internal drive and keep the external drive for backing up and for storage. Is the best way to do this to shrink down my main internal drive and have two partitions on it, one with xp and one with linux and then have the external drive as extra space? I would like to keep a NTFS partition on the external drive because then I am able to backup bigger file sizes at one time, where as the FAT32 limits the size of one backup. Would it make sense to have a NTFS partition on the external drive for the backup of xp and then have the rest be FAT32 so that both xp and linux could read and write to that partition? And if so, what is the best way to go about doing this?

if it matters the external drive is a maxtor 5000

any help would be appreciated since I am very new to this

I hope this is enough info

Best way to go about this is Without Redhat, and WIthout Mandrake.
I'm not sure about Redhat 9 but other versions and all version of Mandrake have been unable to resize an NTFS partition. Also, Redhat and Mandrake both ship with ACPI and APM features disabled, requiring you to recompile the kernel just to get you battery monitor and sound card to work (typically). Other features such as the internal fan may be disabled without this as well.

If your ok with recompiling the kernel and such, then why not just check to see if your Dell Restore cd has the option of formatting in FAT32?. Otherwise youll be stuck with just reading the drive.

If your not ok with recompiling, go get Suse 8.2, it can resize the disk and comes with ACPI and APM enabled. Either of these features can also be instantly disabled if they cause installation problems.

I second the recommendation of SuSE 8.2. You might want to consider using Partition Magic to resize the NTFS partition on both drives. I used it to shrink my winxp partition and then formatted the rest for linux. PM is a windows program, but it is very powerful and easy to use. ACPI is included in the SuSE 8.2 kernel, but the acpid daemon is not started by default. You have to edit the runlevel to enable it. Right now only the battery monitor is implemented-no suspend functions.
Zane

Another question. Would it make sense since I would like to keep all the data that I have on my main internal drive, to format my external drive with one NTFS partition and have the rest be a FAT32 partition? After I format it I could transfer everything on the internal drive over to the external drive and re-partition that drive to house both XP and linux. Then I could move whatever back over that I wanted to.
Does this make sense to do or is it the easiest way to go about doing this?

hi.. guyss. truthly i just new in linux OS. so i hope you guys can help me hehe
i just have installed linux red hat 9.. n i've format my drive installed with linux use ext2..
can u explain what is exactly ext2 n ext3.. can I install linux with FAT32 of NTFS format....
thanks for ur answer..:

geezy,
I am not sure exactly what you are wanting to do. If you shrink the winxp partition on the internal drive, none of your data will be affected. SuSE will automatically set up a mount point for that partition so that you can access it from linux. You could then look at that partition and copy data from it to your linux partition. You could not write to it.
I you want the ablility to write to the winxp partition from linux, you will need to reformat the windows partition as FAT32 and reinstall winxp.
If you want to use the external drive as a backup for both OS's, you might want to format two partitions on it--one as FAT32 for winxp and the other as ext3 or reiserfs for linux.
Zane

different file systems on the hard drive, they are more efficient than fat32 and probably ntfs.
linux can read ntfs right now but not write. i guess you could mount it on fat32 cause it can read/write but i shudder at the thought. its unnatural.

Which would be better to use to partition my internal drive, either Partition Magic or through the SuSE installation tool?

partition magic due to the file system currently being ntfs. if it was fat32 i wouldnt bother with PM

i have a question on dual partition:

i had a friend help me install linux on a dell inspiron 5100. she defined the FAT32 partition (to be seen by both windows and linux) as swap space. now i'm finding that i am not able to mount this partition. i guess the partition should not have been defined as swap space.

so i need to redefine this partition from swap to simple hard drive. what is the quickest way to do this? do i need to reinstall partition magic, ie start from scratch? or should i reinstall red hat?

i used partition magic 8 and red hat 9.0

thanks for your help
nadur

nadur,

Your linux swap partition has a special format called "swap". It is different than FAT32, ext2, ext3, or reiserfs. Usually when you specify the swap partition, the installation routine will automatically format it as swap. You might want to rerun the installation routine and see if it will let you repair the installation and properly format the swap partition.

Zane

thank you Zane.

i rerun the installation, installed the kernel applications, followed the instructions in the readme file and everything worked fine.

nadur