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Old 06-17-2002, 12:38 PM   #1
its4
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Registered: Jun 2002
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Request for advice


Hello,
I am in the planning stage of installing Linux and dual-booting alongside Win2K. The target PC currently has a 40GB hard drive that has Win2K installed (NTFS).

I also have a spare 40GB hard drive that I'm thinking about installing but I would first like to know if it is better to have Wndows and Linux installed on the same disk or to install each OS on a separate disk? What are the trade-offs with respect to installation difficulty (partitioning, boot-loaders), performance, maintenance, etc?

Any knowledgeable advice is greatly appreciated.
 
Old 06-17-2002, 03:58 PM   #2
acid_kewpie
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i've said this a fair few times before, but i've 8 minutes till the program i want to watch starts so i may as well say it again.

personally *I* recommend keeping windows and linux on seperate drives where possible.

As they are seperate you (should) start off with the piece of mind that they are physcially seperate and so you shouldn't need to worry as much with partition worries and similar. you can even disconnect the windows drive and put it on the desk while you install linux... not exactly likely to overwrite windows that way is it?

also as tehy are seperate it makes booting them conceptually much easier and more straight forward (although you will need to fiddle a *tiny* bit to get windows to work properly.) With linux on a master drive and windows on a slave drive you *NEVER* need to touch the windows drive to have a full dual boot system. with linux as master all that you need to do to remove linux from the system is to swap the drives back over and you'd never know...

There's not really any ACTUAL benefits or drawbacks on either system AFAIK, but it's much easier to understand. When you are used to linux and are more confident you'll be pretty indifferent when you are used to messing with individual partitions
 
Old 06-17-2002, 07:32 PM   #3
its4
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Registered: Jun 2002
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You implied that it is better to have the Linux disk as the master disk (hda). What are the merits of having one OS or the other on the master disk? Does it have to do with which bootloader is used (Windows vs LILO)?

Can you please point me to a source of information that describes the *tiny*bit of fiddling you mentioned?

Thanks much.
 
Old 06-17-2002, 09:34 PM   #4
cli_man
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As for the merits of having one loader over another, linux will automaticly add an entry into lilo or grub ( linux bootloader ) where with windows I have heard it is possible to duel boot with linux with their bootloader but it would be messy, it is much easier to just use lilo or grub as it is meant to dual boot with windows
 
Old 06-18-2002, 11:13 AM   #5
udayan
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Registered: Apr 2002
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well I have a 40GB hard disk and what i did was went over to site www.connectix.com and got a virtual pc from it. now i can run both windows and linux on the same disk.
Another thing i did --
I've also partitioned my disk where i have allocated 3 gb for another linux os, but here the major problem is that whenever i want to start off with redhat then i gotta boot the system again.
 
  


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