Partitioning A Hard Drive?

[LunarPoet]

I've recently been interested in installing Linux onto my computer. I know I need to parition my harddrive so i can install Linux and keep windows. Can anyone help me? I want to know what program to use and how you can boot from different OS's. ^_^ Thnx

[MetalSkin]

Hey LunarPoet,

have a gander at the first link, it giudes you through repartitioning.

http://www.tweakhound.com/xp/backup/partition.htm

This second link is about installing linux with windows:

http://www.linuxdocs.org/HOWTOs/Linux+Windows-HOWTO/

I'm not sure on what utility i used to repartition, but there are plenty around, just research the one your about to use to make sure its reliable.

[Samuel]

From my experince from Redhat 9, and mandrake, the Linux OS allows you to partition before you install it, tho i am not sure. If you need partition software, I would suggest Partition magic

[unit_number_43]

It depends on what distro you plan on using. Redhat, Mandrake, and SuSE (as well as others) provide a section during the install where you can partition your hard drive. The only thing you need to do is defrag your drive before installing linux. As for dual booting, that's also covered during the install process. You will install a Bootloader, preferably to the MBR (prefferable to me anyway), and when you boot up you will be presented with options on wether to boot to windows or linux. The two most popular boot loaders are Lilo and Grub.

Basically, the answers you're looking for depend on the distro you're going with. Some are more difficult than others to install...

[MetalSkin]

hmmm i could have sworn that the main distros only allow partitioning, not repartitioning.

I'm sure you will still need to use a repartition tool to allocate some free space into a seperate partition, ready for the install.

If you have a windows install, then almost garenteed you only have one partition. follow the guides i posted above, they will help you defrag, repartition and be ready to install linux.

[tacoX]

I'm not very experienced in the whole category of Linux and Partitioning although I once tried it on an older computer (partitioning for a linux only startup) and it worked, but shortly after I had a hard drive failure and ended up getting a new HD.

[MetalSkin]

lol, well yes the easiest approach is just to install another drive.

Problem is you need to create a very small partition as the boot partition (its normaly about um... i think 2 to 5 meg in size). This is made the primary partition and has the boot loader to let you choose which OS you wish to use. So you will still need to repartition, but it would be a hell of a lot easier if you get a new drive for the linux OS.

[Samuel]

Yes. It would be easier with a diff hd. Maybe u have an 20 gig one laying around? I kno i do.. lol.

[unit_number_43]

Metal,

Nope. The three distro's I mentioned all provide partitioning (and repartitioning) during the install. I know, because I've installed them all on a windows box.

Just remember to defrag windows before you partition the drive, otherwise you'll lose chunks of data.

[MetalSkin]

serious? wow, i'm impressed. I havn't tried to repartitin since redhat 7.x and back then i'm pretty sure they didn't, but if they have em now then i'm impressed.

Well there you go mate, take 43's advice and just do a defrag and install the distro. Personaly I recommend Mandrake, though I hear good things about SuSe (but you have to install from the net ). I do like slackware though, but i dont know if it has repartition built into the install.