I am planning to install Red Hat 7.2 to a new hdd (40gb IDE). Will RH do all necessary formatting or will I have to format it first? Will I then be able to easily boot from either hdd installed on my system (13gb IDE running doze 98)?? I'd like to keep the doze running to keep the wife happy while I tweak linux on the other hdd. Any advice or problems you might know of would be appreciated.

Thanks.

yeah, the installation program will do it all no problem install lilo on the main boot record (MBR) during the install and you'll automatically get a 'pretty' windows / linux boot menu when you start. you may want to use part of the space on the new drive as a windows partition, as linux can use windows drives, but not vice versa.

Do you mean loading windows onto the same drive with linux? What is the advantage to this?

10-4 buddy. I spent last night reading that, woke up this morning (well, actually 1pm, but who's counting) and got your reply. Thanks. I talked one of our unix admins at work to walking me through a new kernel compile.

WTF????!!!!

anyway... well i mean that if you give 40gigs over to linux, you'll not be able to use it under windows, if you want to use mp3's etc... just that for a newbie, 'fun' user, you're not gonna be able to waste 40gb just on linux... that's all. you can make it all linux if you want tho, if you're not short of space.

Shit, I'm sorry. I posted a question about accessing my ntfs drives. Apparently I've smoked a bit too much crack since waking up, either that or the sub place just sold me a retard sandwich. Either way, I'm sorry and have replied to the wrong thread.

Well I agree to acid_kewpie that you dont need all 40GB for Linux entirely and shall use partitions of your drive and I may suggest to use only a max. of 5GB for your Linux installation !

Nevertheless I may also suggest you and acid_kewpie that there is a free software available somewhere on net with the name Explorefs which can be used to read Linux File systems under Windows. I am using this for reading my Linux filesystems from Windows, you shall also get that.

Best regards !

Oh yes! I recognise that name! Be warned though, even the latest downloads for explore2fs may completely shag your ext2 filesystems should you try to write to them! And it doesn't work with ext3 (argh! I should never have changed over!).

yeah.. what thymox said. I don't feel at all comfortable relying on a bit of third party hacked freeware to control my entire linux fs. the write support is utterly useless, and has buggered stuff up when i have occasionally used it. when it (if it??) ever gets to version 1 then i might try it again, but there's just no comparison to that and a little bit of inconveinnce you might get with mounting vfat in linux, forcing umasks etc.. small price to pay.

Do you reckon that anyone (possibly someone who is currently involved in Linux filesystem developments) would develop a reliable dll-type-file-thingy to access other mainstream (like ext2/3) filesystems from with Windows?

It just seems a trifle curious that virtually no-one that's involved in developing access to other filesystems within Linux, should not get involved in the same thing for other OSs.

my current hdd is 13gb with approx 8gb unused. Would I be better off to just partition this drive in half and install linux to the other half, scrapping the second hdd drive idea? If I go this route will I be able to run windows normally if I don't have linux up and going 100%. I need to keep windows going so the wife can surf and chat etc. while i play with linux.

OK, it doesn't matter whether you have Linux on 1 HDD (sharing with Windows) or on the 26th HDD (sharing with Windows), you will not be able to run both at the same time. You will have to dual-boot, like the majority of people here. I have heard that Linux 'feels more comfortable' if it's on it's own harddrive and doesn't share with anything else, but not too sure about this - should be comfortable anyway! If you want to set up your machine so that your wife gets Windows only, then you could install Linux onto the spare 8Gb that you have and do not install Lilo. Make sure that you create a boot disk, and then in order to get Linux you simply put the disk in the drive prior to booting up.

if you secretly want to have the extra harddrive for the sake of it, then i'll happily say yes! ;-)

but realistically you would potentially be better of with just one hdd, especially as it can be easy to get confused abuot which is the promary master and slave, and which mbr you write etc...

if you really don't need the spare space then i would suggest repartitioning. 3gb would do fine for a newbie user (i personally only have 4gb). so it's standard installation procedures really... defrag the drive properly, back stuff up etc... but it really should be pretty painless, although i'm not quite sure just how powerful redhats diskdruid actually is, i know that the newest mandrake distro will perfectly resize windows partitions during it's install.

feel free to mail me if you wish.

and if you have a spare 40gb dirve then i'll gladly send you a addressed jiffy bag and a bunch of stamps!

4Gb! You're not really trying, are you kewps? I've got around 13.5Gb as ext3 (and another 500Mb as Linux Swap). Ah, not worrying about running out of space is such a nice feeling!

Yep, as kewps said above, unless you're comfortable with either writing down (or remembering) which harddisk is which, which has the bootable mbr, etc, etc, then I'd stick with just the 1 harddisk for the moment.

I put Mandrake on it's own hd as primary master and Windoh's as secondary master and then choose which OS I want at boot time- now as I understand it, if I should need to reinstall Windoh's, there won't be a problem with screwing up access to Linux - I'd simply switch to make Windoh's the primary - then put it back as secondary after the reinstall.
Haven't had to test this yet....have I got it all wrong?

And now that I have linux taking up all of a 40G drive, can I safely resize the partitions to make room for other distros?
I know, I know....I should have just sized the partitions smaller in the first place.
Doh! Live and learn