Hi folks,
Good day to you all. First timer here and need some help. I have partitioned my system so that I want to be able to dual boot from either linux or windows(XP). The thing is I have already installed winXP and one partition is left unformatted for linux installation. I am going to install mandrake on it. my trivial questions are here:
Is formatting of that partition taken care of by linux or should it be preformatted before installing linux.
After linux installation on that partition does my system become dual bootable automatically or do I have to do something for that to happen.

these may seem silly but I am new to linux and would like any help available.

thanks in advance,
rick

Yes you format it during installation. I presume you have 1 hard drive with a NTFS partition all ready? (Windows) As long as you have enough space left on that hard drive you should be fine.

If you are unsure how to partition then use the following:


1 partition as LinuxSwap (give this around double your RAM, IE if you had 512mb RAM then make this partition 1024mb is size)

1 Partition as ext3 @ '/' (give the remaining free space to this)


If you already have Windows installed BEFORE you install Linux, which is what i think you have done, then Mandrakelinux will pick this up and automatically make your system dual bootable.

Thanks,
GlenX

whoops that was real quick.
thanks glenx but regarding your first answer- I have a partition which isnt formatted (just bare) do I need to NTFS format it with win before I install mandrake? I read some where here that NTFS formatting would be a prob for linux ??

-rick

Hi wrangler,

No you do not format it, leave it bare, when you start up the linux installation your hard drive should be something like: Windows NTFS partition & the rest as unformatted space.

Mandrake will then use this unformatted space to make a linux set up (usualy 2 or 3 partitions)

Thanks,
GlenX

No don't format your linux partition ntfs. use ext3 you can use partition magic to do this if you must..... but you can use cfdisk or fdisk that comes with your linux distro not the fdisk that is in windows. you also need a swap partition .

Like GlenX said, Mandrake will format it for you. By default it will set up 3 partitions in that space - swap, /, and /home.

IIRC, the installer should come up with a partion scheme and format it for you (after you confirm). You *might* have to do a "custom" partitioning, though. If that is the case, try the following:

Swap should be double your RAM, up to a max of 1 Gig. More than that is waste.

/ should be 3 - 5 Gig for a normal install.

/home should get everything else.

Then mark all 3 partitions as needing to be formatted, and the installer will take care of it.