Help with Partitions

After reformatting my hard drive several times in the past few days, I'm deciding to seek "professional" advise. I want to dual boot Red Hat 9 w/ Windows xp home. The last time I reformatted I partitioned my drive into two sections, about 40gb and 20gb and intalled windows on the 40. I was hoping to just click the "Automatically Partition" option and select free space..but I have no free space. It says that the section I had left alone is formatted in Fat 16 (i believe). I'm not very savy on this whole partition thing and help would be appreciated. oh yeah, and I tried setting up partition's with partition magic but that was a disaster resulting in not finding ANY os. :? Thank you in advance!

Hi Jayzon,
I'm nothing close from a Professionnal, but I sure can give some usefull information.
Depending on "what" you'll be using windows for, 10-15Gig is way enough.
For linux, I'dd say another 10-15 Gig.

That will leave you with 30-40Gig of free space. That will serve a data storage, and will be accesible by both operating system ( with Read/Write access)

Since I dont really like Windows environment program to manage things, I dont recommend Partition Magic.

If you dont mind reformating the whole HD, install Windows XP first, as it tend to like "hda0" (first place on HD) and is easier to manage (personnal experience) during the install of windows XP, you can create all the appropriate partition.

After Windows is installed, simply throu in the Linux Installation CD and choose to install it on the second partition (10-15Gig) You can specify how you want it divided... Leave at lest 512Mb for Swap about 2-5Gig for Home and leave the rest for Root.

I hope i've given enough information...
Dont hesitate to hit me back if further help is required

That's the thing..I don't know how use disk druid to set up my partitions. If you, or anyone, could point me to a link that would give a decent walkthrough for a noob, I'd appreciate it. Swap, ext, ect are all greek to me...tho I know greek...so more like spanish

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Swap, ext, ect are all geek to me...tho I know greek

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That would sound funnier :D

anyways, i've never really used "disk druid"
if you setup the main partition using the installation cd of windows XP, its really simple

As for the partitionning of the linux "partition" using the linux installation cd, it should like this

hda0, hda1, hda2...

you will install WinXP on hda0,
hda2 is your data storage partition (if you follow my explanation of previous post)

then hda1 is the one left (note that number could change but the "order" will be the same)

simply choose to install linux on the hda1 and choose the option to configure yourself... then you will have the options of setting the size of the partition you want to create... 3 in total usually (swap, / and /home) (note that all these 3 partition will now be included in partition hda1)


I hope I explain this properly... Or at least in a way you understand! :) I dont know greek, but I know french :)

err, Ugo, in linux partitions start at /dev/hda1 not /dev/hda0, thus the partitions will be like:

hda1, hda2, hda3...

you will install WinXP on hda1,
hda3 is your data storage partition (if you follow my explanation of previous post)

then hda2 is the one left (note that number could change but the "order" will be the same),

Correct me if I am wrong, but I think you are mixing up with GRUB bootloader which starts at hd0,0 ?

dylunio

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Originally Posted by dylunio

err, Ugo, in linux partitions start at /dev/hda1 not /dev/hda0, thus the partitions will be like:

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Thanks for the precisions... ( I didnt know exactly since Im not on my linux box at the moment :D)

Jayzon You have enough information?

ok...when I reformat my computer, which I'm about to do...I set up 3 partitions(15,15,30aprox). install Windows to the first. Then I just leave the other two alone with windows and Install Linux to the second partition of 15gb. Right so far? And what file format do I need the last one to be if it's going to be accessed by both Windows xp and linux?

Your #1 so far, format the last as FAT32 as both Os's have erad write on it

Well, thank you very much. I'll see you again with my dual booting machine in perhaps a few hours. Wish me luck.

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Originally Posted by Jayzon

Well, thank you very much. I'll see you again with my dual booting machine in perhaps a few hours. Wish me luck.

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You can do it !!!!