Is this partition safe? :S

[Pekay]

Hi,
I recently got into Linux and my friends told me Mandriva is a good distro, and I bought the magazine which also has an mandriva ltd edition 2005 installation guide. Great, but I'm worried choosing a partition then installing may go wrong and muck up my computer which wouldnt look good since this is a family one.

In the mag it told me if I wanted to choose which operating system to boot up itll be good to choose the option on the installation marked "Use the free space on the Windows partition". Heh Im just worried if something will go wrong. Anything you should recommend, and if something _does_ go wrong. How can I get back up on my feet again ?

Thanks.

[drakebasher]

"Use the free space on the Windows partition" There probably is no free space on the Windows partition: Windows usually uses the entire drive. If you read through these forums, you'll see that there are lots of ways to screw up the first installation. If you are not prepared to re-install Windows, it's probably best if you find another machine or at least another hard drive to do your first installation on. Maybe you should consider getting a "LiveCD" so you can play with Linux without even changing you family's machine? Knoppix makes a great CD and you can get it for just a few bucks from LinuxCD.org

[deek]

Heh...yeah, if I was your father, I wouldn't want you "experimenting" on my machine:)

The liveCD is a great way to go, as already mentioned. I am also fond of the 2nd harddrive, too. I mean, you can pick up a 10-20GB harddrive really, really cheap...pop open the case, remove the IDE and power from the current one, plug it into the extra drive and you can play (and screw up) all you want without worry!

[Pekay]

pop open the case, remove the IDE and power from the current one, plug it into the extra drive and you can play (and screw up) all you want without worry!

I'm a newbie to internal stuff, just wanna know, whats an IDE. Also if I did buy an internal harddrive, would there be any risk in damaging something like "motherboard" or crazy sensitive piece of hardware in there? Plus would a BIOS (or whatever boots the computer to the harddrive in the first place) be able to boot up from and external hard-drive?

Maybe you should consider getting a "LiveCD" so you can play with Linux without even changing you family's machine? Knoppix makes a great CD and you can get it for just a few bucks from LinuxCD.org

Hehe yeah I downloaded that a few weeks ago and looks pretty good to explore =).

Thanks both for your input

[drakebasher]

Plus would a BIOS (or whatever boots the computer to the harddrive in the first place) be able to boot up from and external hard-drive?

Search these forums and the web (google.com/linux) for these questions. Whether your computer can boot to an external depends mostly on your computer, but in any case it adds some complications. Some users have problems with getting their USB ports correctly recognized.

As to the internals: the IDE cable is a "ribbon" cable, 40 or 80 wires wide with a 40-pin connector to the hard drive. With a little care, if your hands aren't too big, it's not difficult to disconnect/reconnect it. Note which way it's connected and keep the red stripe on the side next to the power connector. The power connector can only fit one way and they are sometimes hard to disconnect. I've many times only disconnected either the IDE cable or the power connector with the same result and no problems. Before handling any electronics or removing/installing anything, touch an unpainted part of the case to discharge any static electricity.

After fiddling around inside and before re-booting, check all connectors to make sure you haven't accidentally loosened any.

[drakebasher]

If you think you could get an external hard drive, another way you could go, in case you can't get Linux to boot from the external would be to continue using your Knoppix as the OS and using your external initially as your home partition so you are able to set and save your set up preferences, downloaded programs/packages, etc and if you get the Knoppix sources (see the documentation) you will even be able to get additional software from source and compile it yourself. If you are able to burn a bootable CD (as obviously you can), you could even make a CD that will load your kernel and boot on the external drive independently of what your BIOS is capable of. The good news and the bad news about Linux: you can do anything you want, but you'll always want to do more....

Cheers~