Boot to smal XP partion

[alsehendo]

I have an large empty part ion D

I read somewhere you can divide this extra part ion up into one small one and one large one. Then you can boot to the small one, (D) with XP, when desired, and mount the larger one, (E).

This seems desirable because I do not want to us LILO or GRUB--reducing the chances of whacking my XP. There is a lot of stuff on XP I do not wish to loose and wont take a chance on conventional dual boot methods.

Can anyone elaborate on this; I did a search but did not find it.

[UgoDeschamps]

I have an large empty part ion D

I read somewhere you can divide this extra part ion up into one small one and one large one. Then you can boot to the small one, (D) with XP, when desired, and mount the larger one, (E).

This seems desirable because I do not want to us LILO or GRUB--reducing the chances of whacking my XP. There is a lot of stuff on XP I do not wish to loose and wont take a chance on conventional dual boot methods.

Can anyone elaborate on this; I did a search but did not find it.

I dont quite get what you want... Or I dont understand it well enough to explain correctly....
As far as I understand, you have 1 Hard Drive that isnt partionned right? you have lots of space on it and want to redistribute it right?
the into one of the partition you want to have linux?

I'm lost by your explanations...
MBR wont get busted by a linux installation as you can choose not to write to the MBR and boot with a floppy and choose from there what partition to boot (GRUB)...

Please elaborate on your needs thanks

[alsehendo]

Yes I have two unused parttions on disk drive. I know I will have to make them xtf3 to use linux--or at least I want to.

I don't have a floppy diisk drive on my laptop.

THE MISSION:
Boot image on a small partion, (formaly D: now xtf3 ) that will act exactly like bootable floop and edit boot.ini in XP to boot this second partion. Then you can treat the third partion much the same way you treat a partion that uses a boot disket to for startup.

I know there are alternatives and have used them many times. There are reasons I want to do this--to long to go into right now.

Wanted Partions:
C:/ = XP
hda2= Small bootable Linux partion replacing boot disket
hda3= Rest of Linux that hda2 boots.

Anotherwords using reformated drive D: to xtf3, (now a Linux boot partion) insted of using Linux floppy disk to boot the Linux partion on hda3, which is also now xtf3, (that formaly was formaly E.

I could burn a CD to do the same as a diskett and not use 3 partions but this would be a pain to put in all the time.

[Stormblazer]

um... Grub is quite safe to use as far as i know.

Even so, why can't you edit the boot.ini from inside windows XP?

[alsehendo]

I can but the Redhat site instruction say you have to copy first 512k of the linux boot sector of a file and like boot.inf and refer to it via boot.ini you cant boot it directly from boot.in

From the Redhat site:

Copy the boot image from the first sector of your boot partition.
You'll want to take 512 bytes of this partition once, and write it out
to a file called bootsect.lnx. The entry should look like:
dd if=/dev/hdX of=/bootsect.lnx bs=512 count=1

Here is the catch22
How can I do this command to a partion I cant acess.

Move that file onto your c:\ drive and edit boot.ini, adding the
following line: c:\bootsect.lnx="Linux" (this is also easy enough to
do)

I seem to be able to boot to rescue diisk, can you just give me the command to boot hda5 from here.