new partitions on new hard drives
 

i have a 160 gb new hard drive that i have installed pysically. now im ready to prepare it for linux and the such. i intend on having a 20 GB space for linux. 1 GB for swap and all the remaining to be vfat.

what formay does the linux and swap space need to be?

what is the difference between stripped an mirrored?

Giving linux 20GB is totally perfect; you should give the amount of swap twice the size of your RAM.

Are you sure you want to use RAID? Stripping data has fast acess to the data; mirroring data means that if a hard drive goes down, th other one has a mirror of it like a backup.

well i got a SATA harddrive and i didnt want to mess with returning it and such so i just got a PCI card that was like an adapter.

RAID was my only real option.

is there any other way to do it?

and how do i make a partition vfat? it only gave me the option for nfts or whatever it was.

EDIT:actually i dont think i used raid cause i didnt make any sets.

EDIT2:and where do i get these? i cant put it into vfat or anything else....

ewww VFAT

arghh i'm alergic to that FS

it is slow and unreliable compared to Linux native FS
why not use on of them?


Whipermr5
Distribution: Redhat Linux 9 & Windows XP (though I hate it)
Why not get CrossXover office
it lets you install and run Internet Explorer, Adobe Suite, MS Office
Macromedia Suite MX
Trillian, MSN messenger etc (certified and Working)

plus i havent found a windows Installer that doesnt work with it yet :)

ok....well....i wanted to make 120 GB of my new hard drive available to both XP and linux....what would you suggest?

i wanted to be able to put all my music on that part and then have either OS be able to read AND write on it.

also, i planned on getting fedora

It costs money :(

If you really need to share it with windows, maybe FAT32 is OK. Even I use it for all my data, instead of My Documents in windows or /home in linux.

right.....so how do i make it fat32?

Besides, I'm not having windows because I need it. I think OpenOffice is much better. It's just that it's a family computer; and my entire family uses windows, and thinks linux is too hard to learn. I'm just a kid anyway, so I can't get a new computer all to myself :(

You can use fdisk.
It lets you create a new partition with almost any imaginable fs type.

and that is?

if you have AIM, my SN is ssj5kuhanten.

i have no clue what you guys are talking about. thats why im on the newbie board.

fdisk is a partitioning tool. You can run it from the command prompt by typing fdisk /dev/hdb and hitting enter. This assumes you want to configure the second hardrive. Then type m and hit enter. A list of what you can do appears. Hit n and then enter. You can select what fs type to use, size, label and other things here.

how do i get to the command prompt?

Ctrl + ALT + F1

But you would have to install Windows first, and then a Linux distribution. You can just make the entire installation FAT32 and then make a Linux installation, picking ext3 or ReiserFS for the Linux partitions.

that did nothing at all

Ok, you could always get another partitioning tool if fdisk is too advanced. You can download bootitng, a partitioning program that allows you to resize, delete, move, or any other thing you can do to partitions. The trial is free, and you can even resize ntfs safely using it. It all fits into a floppy disk, and you can boot of the floppy disk

and i use windows currently....infact, as we speak, im burning the 4th iso disc for fedora core 3.

Use a distro with a good disk partitioning tool. Mandrake's is particularly good, so is Fedora's. All distros come with partitioning tools as part of the install. You create the partitions and set the size and filesystem during the installation. Just make sure you choose the 'custom' or 'advanced' option when you get to the partitioning stage of the install. Use ext3 for the linux / partition. The swap partition (which should be 2x RAM up to a limit of 512MB) is formatted as 'linux swap' - you don't have an option about that. Your plan is sound, IMHO.