I had a couple of helpful replies about what to do on this but could anyone tell me exactly what partitions to make to put XP on first, then Mandrake, then leave a decent sized FAT32 partition available for data storage that's both readable and writable by both platforms?

I was wondering (on a 30GB HD) whether to put the primary partition separating 10GB from 20GB, and if so, do I need to then put a logical (or is it extended) partition (seeing as I can only use one primary partition) separating the 20GB into two 10GB sections (so the whole drive is effectively in thirds) or what? Once it's been separated, which software should I place in which section etc...?

Sorry, but it's a first time job for me and i'm doing it all with FDISK and want to get it right first time!

Thanks

I have a 30GIG HD and I have 5 partitions - I used fdisk to create all.
I have 3 partitions for WINDOWS (XP and 98) and 2 for LINUX - one a swap and another a ROOT (/)
Install Windows first.
When you use fdisk - you first create a primary partition, then a logical partition - then your extended partitions.

Regards