Guest bcblalock Posted October 20, 2007 Report Share Posted October 20, 2007 Hi, I have a brand new Western Digital hard drive that I want to install Mandriva on. My first drive has XP on it and I don't want to change it at all. In the initial setup of the new hard drive it asks whether I want to set it up as an additional storage device or a new boot device. I'm afraid if I set it up as a new boot device it will create problems with my other primary XP drive. But I'm also concerned that if I set it up as a storage device I won't be able to boot Mandriva from it. Also, I want to be able to access data from both drives in Mandriva and XP. Is this possible? One other thing, should I let the Western Digital tools program set the partition in the new drive or let Mandriva do that during installation? How big should the partition be? I'm probably leaving out some vital detail, however I can't think of anything else at this point. -Thanks for any assistance Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AussieJohn Posted October 20, 2007 Report Share Posted October 20, 2007 Hello and a big Welcome to MUB. First of all, is your new WD HDD an ordinary IDE or is it a SATA II ???. If it is a SATA II, has your Mainboard a standard SATA or the newer SATA II ???. If your board is a standard SATA and your new drive is SATA II then you must make certain to set the link on the back off the drive as per the WD instructions otherwise the drive may not work, since a SATA II drive is not normally compatible with standard SATA mainboard. If it is a SATA or SATA II drive then you must go into the machines BIOS and set the SATA to be enabled and to also be able to have it boot up. Don't be so precious about your Windows installation. Leave it on its drive and go ahead and install Linux on your new hard drive. Before you do that, do a bit of googling for information on how to set up a Linux install. Unless you do something particularly stupid it is highly unlikely that installing Linux will cause problems in your Windows. Every time I have read that someone is blasting Linux for supposedly screwing up a Windows it is obvious the complainer has done a screwup but won't admit it.. Please give the requested details and see how we go from there. Cheers. John. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest bcblalock Posted October 21, 2007 Report Share Posted October 21, 2007 Thanks for your kind welcome. This new drive is actually a replacement from WD because the one I had for about 6-8 months died on me...I couldn't believe it. So I know this drive is fully compatible with my setup. As far as the initial setup of the drive, I think I should just set it as an additional storage drive, otherwise the WD tools program will try to copy XP to the new drive, which I don't want. Still, though, I'm not certain on the amount of space to allocate into the new partition for Mandriva, and whether or not I should let the WD tools program do that or let the Mandriva install program do it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ianw1974 Posted October 21, 2007 Report Share Posted October 21, 2007 You can install Mandriva on 10GB, total, but you should partition like this: swap = memory x 2 (normally, although 512MB usually enough if you have 1GB ram or higher) / = 10GB (is enough, but I usually make 20GB to give me plenty of room for other things) /home = rest of available space, this is where your data will go, docs, music, etc, unless you want to store it somewhere else. Some people may say partition further, but you really don't need to. Learn that later when you have a bit more experience - the above is enough, really. Let the Mandriva tools do the disk, forget about using WD's tools, or anyone elses - you don't need them. The main thing is enjoy, and learn. You can always reinstall again later with different partition schemes once you've used it, become familiar with it, and happy to want to use it all the time. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AussieJohn Posted October 21, 2007 Report Share Posted October 21, 2007 (edited) Very well put Ian. The WD tools are only intended to address problems you may have with the Drive itself. I have used WD hard drives exclusively since I started building my own computers back in 1998 and only once did I have to use them and that was because of a stuff-up made by a Windows install in 1999. You will find WD well up to their intended task but helping installations is NOT one of them. Use Linux tools to install and to fix any problems that may arise. "Horses for courses" as they say. Cheers. John. Edited October 21, 2007 by AussieJohn Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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