reavercop Posted April 28, 2004 Report Share Posted April 28, 2004 (edited) Hi all I have got mandrake version 10 now and my comp has currently windows 2000 installed. 80 gig hard drive partitioned C(9.76 gig),F(19.5 gig),G(19.5gig),H(25.6 gig) Partition C,F,G are primary partition and H is extended partition all formatted with NTFS V5.0. So I gather I have to reformat my drive, drive G is boot drive and drive C is system drive in windows terms.. So how do I reformat this drive to make use of dual boot effectively, does reformatting is the only option I have? I am happy with windows 2000 Os its rock solid unlike all other MS OS but I wanna give linux a go and learn a bit from it...and thats the whole purpose of all this.. So whats the best way to dual boot above 2 Os's with minimal fuss.. mandrake official release v10 and windows 2000. Cheers Edited April 28, 2004 by reavercop Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
anacron Posted April 28, 2004 Report Share Posted April 28, 2004 The Mandrake installer creates dual boots very nicely; I've been doing it since 8.0. These instructions are from the demo section at the Mandrake site. "If installing Mandrake Linux 9.0 onto a hard drive that already contains MS-Windows, make a note of how much disk space is free for Linux to use. To install Mandrake Linux onto a hard drive that already contains Windows, you will need to resize the existing Windows partition to make room for Linux. This step can be performed within the installer. But before installing Mandrake, it is strongly recommended that you run Disk Defragmenter and ScanDisk from within Windows on the drive. And as always, back-up any data that you cannot afford to lose before installing Mandrake Linux. There are two installation classes to choose from depending on your skill level. The Recommended install is intended for users who prefer to let the installer make most of the decisions. The DrakX Partitioning Wizard asks where on the hard drive you would like to install Mandrake Linux. The easiest partitioning solution is to erase the entire disk, but this means that ALL existing partitions and their data will be lost. Another convenient option is to let the installer automatically resize a Windows partition to make room for Linux, however this option is only for if Windows occupies one large partition that spans the entire disk. If the disk already has multiple partitions, or if the PC has more than one hard drive, you'll need to create Linux partitions using one of the other methods. A final option is called "Custom disk partitioning" -- this launches DiskDrake, the graphical disk partitioner that will easily resize a Windows partition. 1) Select the Windows partition to be resized by clicking on it with the mouse. The Windows FAT partition is displayed in blue. 2) Select the "Resize" button. 3) An alert reminds you to backup important data before proceeding. 4) Choose the new size for Windows after shrinking it. In this example, Windows is left with 827MB. Tip: use the left and right cursor keys to fine-tune the partition size. 5) A new empty partition is created. 6) Select the new empty partition and choose the "Auto allocate" button to automatically create Linux partitions. 7) Choose "Done" and write the changes to disk. That's it! Any newly created Linux partitions will then be formatted." HTH. Good luck & welcome to Linux! :D Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
reavercop Posted April 28, 2004 Author Report Share Posted April 28, 2004 Yes you only talked about FAT file system I only got NTFS on all 4 partitions 3 primary and 1 extended logical drive...all NTFS formatted will it be okay? Cheers for any help mate once I go through 1 intallation successfully then I will be okay I guess it just the first try that is scary ... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
anacron Posted April 28, 2004 Report Share Posted April 28, 2004 NTFS is fine. I'm dual booting Mandrake 8.2 (10 is on the way) with XP, and I've done it before with Win2K. B) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
scoopy Posted April 28, 2004 Report Share Posted April 28, 2004 Just wanted to note that anacron's quoted instructions from Mandrake are intended for those window's systems that were installed and use 100% of the harddrive (C://) and were always risky to try. reavercop, It is not clear where you plan on installing Linux? How much space can you give Linux? If you can clear a separate partition with windows first, I think that will make it easier (H:// would be possible here). I suppose you have data you need to keep on the partitions you have. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
anacron Posted April 28, 2004 Report Share Posted April 28, 2004 "...Another convenient option is to let the installer automatically resize a Windows partition to make room for Linux, however this option is only for if Windows occupies one large partition that spans the entire disk. If the disk already has multiple partitions, or if the PC has more than one hard drive, you'll need to create Linux partitions using one of the other methods. A final option is called "Custom disk partitioning" -- this launches DiskDrake, the graphical disk partitioner that will easily resize a Windows partition. 1) Select the Windows partition to be resized by clicking on it with the mouse. The Windows FAT partition is displayed in blue. 2) Select the "Resize" button. 3) An alert reminds you to backup important data before proceeding. 4) Choose the new size for Windows after shrinking it. In this example, Windows is left with 827MB. Tip: use the left and right cursor keys to fine-tune the partition size. 5) A new empty partition is created. 6) Select the new empty partition and choose the "Auto allocate" button to automatically create Linux partitions. 7) Choose "Done" and write the changes to disk. That's it! Any newly created Linux partitions will then be formatted." The quoted instructions are for the custom partitioning option, which I think would apply in this case. Of course, if reavercop wanted to otherwise manipulate the existing partitions, that would be another story, and would require outside software. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
reavercop Posted April 28, 2004 Author Report Share Posted April 28, 2004 Just wanted to note that anacron's quoted instructions from Mandrake are intended for those window's systems that were installed and use 100% of the harddrive (C://) and were always risky to try. reavercop, It is not clear where you plan on installing Linux? How much space can you give Linux? If you can clear a separate partition with windows first, I think that will make it easier (H:// would be possible here). I suppose you have data you need to keep on the partitions you have. yeah drive H would be good I can allocate 10 gig for maybe 15 gig....if things go well I put another harddisk as well I have one spare ...drive H only got 1 game installed anyway I uninstall it and delete partition after that do I let linux do its job on this partition ? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
healingbear Posted April 28, 2004 Report Share Posted April 28, 2004 reavercop, if you have spare HDD you may want to consider installing Mandrake on it... This will save you time... I have Mandrake 10 CE on my master HDD, 15 G ( MBR on it ) and XP Pro as my slave, 80 G ... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
scoopy Posted April 28, 2004 Report Share Posted April 28, 2004 Just realized this... about those NTFS partitions... I don't Linux is quite up to working with them like it is with Fat partitions. So, in plainer English. I would reformat H: while in windows (using fdisk, although, Mandrake will be able to do this also... long as there is nothing else on this partition you need to worry about) . Format 15 GB with FAT32 (in case you want to move files from Linux to Windows or vice-verse) and leave the rest unused for Linux. I would also agree to use a spare drive, if possible. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
anacron Posted April 28, 2004 Report Share Posted April 28, 2004 (edited) The installer was overhauled in 9.1 to include NTFS partition resizing. This from MandrakeSoft:"In addition to being able to resize NTFS partitions, the installation procedure provides many unique features such as offering various file systems (including journalized file systems EXT3, ReiserFS, XFS, and encrypted file systems), setting up RAID disks, and resizing MS-Windows FAT32 partitions." This from linuxmigration.com: "If the machine has Windows NT/2000/XP that uses an NTFS filesystem, one of the easier ways to resize an NTFS partition is to get Mandrake Linux 9.1, which includes the ability to easily resize NTFS partitions through a graphical user interface. You would start the process of installing Mandrake Linux. Then after you have shrunk the NTFS partition, you can either continue to install Mandrake, or you can then install another version of Linux." The webpage on Linux dual booting & partitions. Also, I access my WinXP files easily from Drake8. It even gives you a ready made mount point. Sounds like Mandrake is the right choice for NTFS partitions! Edited April 28, 2004 by anacron Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
reavercop Posted May 4, 2004 Author Report Share Posted May 4, 2004 Okay thx all I partition magic my drives and it took six hours LOL to all the resizing for some reason but at the end I got 15 gig out of it in 3 different partitions 1 for linux boot,linux swap and 5 gig free space for future linux installs from scratch. Wow it amazed me how easy is mandrake linux is all point and click only if I could play latest games on it I would ditch MS Os for sure but for time being I would dual boot.. Now I wanna learn some shell commands where do I learn them eg ,mounting,copy,format etc and some background knowledge. thx all who replied appreciated a lot. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
spinynorman Posted May 4, 2004 Report Share Posted May 4, 2004 Now I wanna learn some shell commands where do I learn them eg ,mounting,copy,format etc and some background knowledge. You could try linuxcommand.org. :) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Darkelve Posted May 5, 2004 Report Share Posted May 5, 2004 Linux documentation project: http://www.tldp.org/. I recommend the "Linux cookbook" and "newbie administrators guide" Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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