Partition for 5 drives?
 

I've searched over :Pengy:LQ.com and cannot find what I'm looking for, or if I find it, it's to complicated for me to understand.

Right now I'd like to take my 40 gig hard-drive and give it this:

- 5 gigs to College Linux
- 5 gigs to Debian
- 5 gigs to Gentoo
- 5 gigs to Mandrake
- 20 gigs to Windows 98 (I have the boot disk)

First off, does this make sense to install so many distros? Second, how do I partition my drives in the simplest way (I did it before, but only for a RedHat Windows dual boot)? And last, if I install them all, how would I be able to load each one when I want them?

Thank you,
SevenForever.

You can install as many as you want - it may get confusing and time consuming having so many though.

Just let each system partition as it likes although you may want to have a common /home partition so you can share data between distros.

You can choose which system you want to boot using a bootloader such as grub or lilo - just create an entry in the config for each OS.

Alright, thanks! Quick response too! Thank you.

I don't think there is a point of having 4 distos, try them one by one and then stick it to 2 20 gig partitions 1 for windows one for linux. Mandrake is quite large and I doubt its gonna be a decent install if you only give it 5 gigs.

And I am not sure, I do not think that HD's can have more than 4 primary partitions, so you may not be able to hack it up like that.

I'm not sure which distro I'd like, and if I get one I don't like, I don't really want to reformat my computer just to install another distro, I'd lose windows 98 again.

Only 4 partitions? Hmm, I'll leave Debian alone for now then...

You won't lose windows if you install it properly and you shouldn't need to stick to primary partitions except for windows.

You don't have to reformat. It is easy to format JUST the linux partition when you reinstall another disto. It will not affect your windows partition if you are careful.

That's possible? Might you be able to shed me some light on the subject?

Just don't delete your windows partition - that's about it.

Lets say you are installing fedora core 1. You RESIZE the windows partition which will not delete you data, then you make a linux ext3 partition and a swap partition. Then, you install to the linux partition.

If you do not like it and wish to change, you boot from the other distos cd and when it comes to partitioning you can just either delete the linux one and make another, therefore getting rid of all the files, or some distos will just format for you when you choose what drive to install on. Thus, if you want to install on the second partition (which is hda2) you would put in at the install point which asks for where /dev/hda2. There are many howtos around, maybe check those? :) I think there may be something there.

Alright, I'll see if I can locate some of thoses howtos. One last thing, this is all done from the "dos type" command prompt I used when I reformated my computer?

Keep in mind that windows 98 need to be on the first partition.
With Grub you might be able to hide the other partitions to fool windows 98 to believe itäs alone.

Depends on the disto. Some have graphical partitioners, some use fdisk or whatever. It all really depends, but most of the time you don't have to use the 'dos' like command line.

Graphical partitioners? Hmm, so right now I'm running Windows XP and somewhere on a second partition RedHat 9.x exists, after I delete thoses two partitions, I can boot up my computer from CD-Rom on a (say Mandrake) distro, I could get a graphical partitioner from that distro to partition my drives to however I want?

I dont know about mandrake, I believe it has one but I am not sure :( sorry.

if it does, you can manually partition it or automatically do it but with automatic it would partition thinking you only want mandrake. I would install windows first THEN use the mandrake one to resize the windows partitions (resize, NOT delete then remake another one) and make a ext3 or resiserfs partition for linux.