unixfreak -- just so we're clear, I'm interpreting your comments to mean that the C:\ drive would correspond to the first partition and the D:\ drive would correspond to the second partition. Now, Yes, you can drop the second, "D:\ " partition, but you would lose all the data and/or programs that were installed there. As I already said, whether or not that would cause problems to you is unknown to me.

That being said though, technically you would NOT "install Linux on the C drive of Windows", because the C:\ drive (aka the first partition) has been allocated to Windows. Instead, you would be installing Linux into the just-freed-up, unallocated 20G of free space (created by dropping the second 20G partition).

I think you may be confusing the term "free space" with "unallocated space". The difference is as follows (and for clarity, let's assume your original 40G is divided into one 19G partition and one 21G partition): When you define a partition, say 19G of space, and install Windows on it, all 19G of space now belongs to Windows. Period. It can't be given to Linux, and it doesn't matter if Windows is actually using only 7G of data within that 19G, ALL 19G now has been allocated to Windows, with the remaining 21G is currently unallocated. (If you subsequently allocated that 21G of space to Windows, it would become the D:\ drive.)

You might be thinking that you can install Linux into the "free" 12G of space (19G - 7G in this example) that is not currently being used by Windows, but you would be wrong. Instead, the only space that would be available to install Linux into would be the unallocated 21G space. Assuming that you are still following along, that 21G would have previously contained your D:\ drive. A useful analogy to think of is to equate partitions to ice cube trays: the tray itself (partition) is always the same size, regardless of how many ice cubes (data) may be in the tray.

If you are not already familiar with the concepts of hard drive partitioning, then I cannot emphasize enough that you need to take the initiative to do some reading and educate yourself on how it works. -- J.W.

Let's wait until this guy gives me a response. I am praying that it's only one 40GB drive (in one). To minimize the headaches.

I agree... lets wait.

But I think you still don't understand exactly what partitioning is. From what it sounds like, you will most likely receive one hard drive.

Storage capacity =40gb.

Partitioning is a way to split up that SINGLE (one, not two, but one) Physical (able to hold it in your hand) drive into several (more than one) drives to sort of fool your computer into thinking you have more hard drives than you actually have.

To not confuse you with another analogy, take the ice cube tray. The whole tray is one Physical Drive. Each cube in that tray would be a partition. So while you can plainly see you only have one drive(tray) your computer would see many more (each cube)

Does this make sense?

Do a little reading on partitioning if it still doesn't make sense.

A thousand apologies if I come across as patronizing or condescending, it is not what I intend.

I know what is the meaning of Partitioning a drive. Please understand. I know what it means. But for me to install Linux on that PC I need to know which of the "split"drive should I install it to.

????

Then why this thread? -- J.W.

Install mandrake on drive "D" Just put the install disk in. when you get to the partitioning part, mandrake will give you the options it has found. It will show you your hard disk split into the drives it has found. Just delete and format drive "D" and then click "auto allocate" and mandrake will choose the partitions and their sizes on the newly formatted space which used to be drive "D". It should be no harder than this. You are being far to hesitant I think, I say this because the mandrake installer should have absolutely no problem with this at all. Just don`t touch the "C" drive.

J.K -

Thanks alot. Thats what I needed. The exact steps on what to do.

Ok, I forgot to mention one omportant thing here. Of course, I want to Dual-Boot with Windows. When the drives are split up, is this going to be a different procedure or just still follow the steps you gave me as above?

As I mentioned, I'm going to be dual-booting with Windows on that machine.

If you guys can provide more analogies or examples on how to do this it would be great.

J.K- You provided me a great example on how to install this on split drives. But if you could, more would be appreciate it to add these in my install notes.

Please, don't bump your posts ... if you have something
to add, edit the previous post.


Cheers,
Tink

If you already have mandrake installed on another computer, look in "mandrake documentation". It has more info on how to operate diskdrake and what it`s functions are

Cheers

unixfreak - http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...icle&artid=121 please read this and understand. Also, questions and solutions on dual booting come up almost daily on LQ. Try searching for "dual boot" and/or (because of random spelling on LQ ) "duel boot". As to your final question - the bootloader will pick up that Windows is installed and you will see at least 2 options - Windows and Mandrake.

Ok, I just got back from Europe and looked at my PC there.

Ok, here is the following info what I saw. And yes, the drive is split up. This is how:

P1_25GB_C (C) Free space=22.4GB Partition/Basic/NTFS
P2_14GB_D (D) Free space=12.5GB Partition/Basic/NTFS

Then, I right clicked on My Computer and then when to Manage. Then to Disk Management and found the following:

Disk0 P1_25GB_C (C) P2_14GB_D (D)
Basic 24.51GB NTFS 13.77GB NTFS
38.28GB Healthy (System) Healthy
Online Primary Partition Logical Drive (Extended)


Then in the D Drive there's 4 folders labeled System Volume Info, tmp, Ins, and Recyler.
In the 'Ins' folder, there was BackW2K2004, PlextorCDRW .

Now how should I install Mandrake on this other PC???

Ok, I just got back from Europe and looked at my PC there.

Ok, here is the following info what I saw. And yes, the drive is split up. This is how:

P1_25GB_C (C) Free space=22.4GB Partition/Basic/NTFS
P2_14GB_D (D) Free space=12.5GB Partition/Basic/NTFS

Then, I right clicked on My Computer and then when to Manage. Then to Disk Management and found the following:

Disk0 P1_25GB_C (C) P2_14GB_D (D)
Basic 24.51GB NTFS 13.77GB NTFS
38.28GB Healthy (System) Healthy
Online Primary Partition Logical Drive (Extended)


Then in the D Drive there's 4 folders labeled System Volume Info, tmp, Ins, and Recyler.
In the 'Ins' folder, there was BackW2K2004, PlextorCDRW .

Now how should I install Mandrake on this other PC???


OK, I know that everyones going to prolly say READ READ READ but I am not familiar on how to install Linux on a split HDD like the PC I have in Europe. If it was one whole HDD than Its simple. But I need to know this. Please help.

It looks like you have a full hard disk, there. If your one hard disk is 40GB big, and you have two partitions, one 25 and one 15, you're going to have to blast one, and use the recovered space to install your Mandrake, or use a partition resizing utility to make one of them small enough to fit a distribution in it.

I forgot what I used to resize partitions, but if you do a google search, I'm very sure you'll find one. Be sure to read the directions for whatever partition resizer you get. I believe you have to defragment your drive and make it so that the defragmentation program puts all your data at the beginning or the end of the partition you want to resize first. After you do that, you can use cfdisk, fdisk, or whatever Mandrake uses to make partitions to create a linux partition for you, then you can install to that.

Another thing you could do is to use loadlin and a dos boot disk to get a distribution on to an FAT drive, but that would be pretty crazy, especially since r/w'n to an NTFS partition isn't very well suppported in the kernel. Last time I checked, anyway. Good luck!

I could use Partition Magic 8.0 but the problem is that since I have this PC in Europe it wont work because of the licensing issues.

I beleive PM 8.0 is only restricted on one PC. And plus, its a bit pricey too.

Mandrake does have a partitioning utility called DrakX. But please explain on what to do step by step. Should I just delete the 15GB one and use the free space on the (C) Drive??