install and partition suggestions please
 

hi everyone, ive been duel booting XP with slackware 11 for the past year or so on a single 20 gig hard drive, however ive just come into possesion of another 20 gig HD, and id like to install XP on one, and slack on the other, but im not quite sure how to do it. also for my previous linux installs ive just created / and swap partitions but thats all, i know that creating a seperate partition for /home is recommended, but then how would the linux system know where these new partitions are and how to use them? any other additional info that might be useful is appreciated.

Are you planning or re-installing slackware ? Or are going to copy you current setup to the new disk ? The reason I ask is that if you re-install the installer handles the details of remembering where each partition is and it's mountpoint. You define them during the install. If you are going to copy your current setup over to the new disk, life gets a little more complicated. You would have to edit a few files, /etc/fstab for one, and your boot loader too, probably others.

Ah, and usually, for a desktop system, /, /home and swap are fine. If you are running a server, then a more complicated setup might be better, I've read it's a good idea to have /var on a seperate partition (for a server), just in case something goes wrong and you have an excess of error messeges, (usually written to /var), that those error logs don't crash your machine by taking up 100% of available disk space. I'm sure there are other tips and tricks, but as I don't run a server, that's the only tip I really have for you. For a home desktop, that isn't so important. The best reason to have /home on it's own partition, is that if you have to reistall the OS, your data doesn't get written over.

Good luck...

David

hi david, thanks for your help, im going to re-install slack from the disk, its good to know that the installer will take care of all the partitions and mount points. i think i will create a /home partition too, just incase :) with this re-install im hoping to do a few other things regarding best practice, like login via a limited user account (im currently logging in as root ;), and id like to bring together the different parts of the system, for a more smooth transition to the desktop, via a login screen (at the moment im booting to the console and manually starting my desktop environment by typing 'startx' then running further desktop environment programs via terminals. im kind of learning linux in a strange way, like one of those .jpgs that starts out whole but fuzzy, then the picture becomes more and more focused. im still at the fuzzy stage at the moment :p thanks again :)