Advice sought on how to partition for W2K/XP/Linux/Linux multi-boot

[ColKurtz]

Just got a new Dell 400SC server with default 40GB drive and a second 250GB drive. 75% of the time it will be acting as a W2K file server, but the rest of the time will be for me to get some hands-on exp with Linux.

I have to run RH9 b/c most of the projects at work are going to be on that distribution, but I'd also like to be able to run at least one --and preferably two or more-- other linux distributions. I'm sure it will be short-lived and I'll eventually settle on one dist, but I'd like to have the freedom to install several without blowing one or more away.

I found a recent thread discussing a similar situation and that helped me get a grasp on things, but I still have questions:

1) I have access to Partition Magic (v7 or v8, I think). Would that be the easiest way to set up and manage the partitions? Pros and cons to this software?

2) General partitioning advice. The other thread advises the first primary partition to be around 1GB, and says it would house the XP and W2K system files. But XP and W2K take way more space than 1GB... am I actually installing those Windows installs to logical partitions (D:, E:?).

3) Also, I keep reading that Linux's boot partition has to be within the first 8GB. Is that for each Linux partition, or can one bootloader handle multiple dist's on multiple partitions?

Anyway, keeping mind that my 2nd hard drive (50GB linux fs, 200GB NTFS) will be the data partitions and I have the first drive's full 40GB for just OS's, how would you recommend setting it up?

Any advice is appreciated.

Thanks!

 

[timswim78]

I am in no way an expert, but I will tell you what I did. It worked fine for me.
I installed Windows 2K on a 20GB hdd. I set up a 10GB partitions during the installation of Win2k, installed Win2k on this partition, and left teh rest of the disk unformatted.

Then I installed Mandrake. It asked me how to setup the disk. I chose to auto allocate the unformatted disk space.

Everything worked great.

 

[Nothinman]

I would recommend VMWare, dualbooting is just annoying and chances are you won't want to reboot most of the time just to use Linux.

lso, I keep reading that Linux's boot partition has to be within the first 8GB. Is that for each Linux partition, or can one bootloader handle multiple dist's on multiple partitions?

This isn't true unless the BIOS of the box is really old and doesn't support LBA32, but if you want to be safe the only partition that has to be below that mark is /boot and it can be extremely small since it only holds the kernel.

 

[KoolDrew]

I agree with nothinman. I used to dual boot with Debian but I hated rebooting just to use it. Then when I wanted to play a game or do anything else that required Windows I would have to reboot. With VMWare you will not have to do this and you can run it while inside Windows. How much RAM do you have though? To run a virtual machine you will need a good bit of RAM so you do not experience slowdown.

 

[FreakyGuy]

I recommend Ranish partition manager

It can boot from any partition on any disk. It's free. It's takes a few to learn but is very powerful.

 

[ColKurtz]

Thanks for the replies. I am going to try Ranish first (thanks for the link FreakyGuy) and if I don't like that I'm just going to go with Partition Magic. I guess I'll put XP and W2K one one primary partition, 12GB or so, then give 3GB logical drives to each linux distros and hope that works.

Thanks again.

 

[MarkM]

Originally posted by: KoolDrew
I agree with nothinman. I used to dual boot with Debian but I hated rebooting just to use it. Then when I wanted to play a game or do anything else that required Windows I would have to reboot. With VMWare you will not have to do this and you can run it while inside Windows. How much RAM do you have though? To run a virtual machine you will need a good bit of RAM so you do not experience slowdown.

I've been reading up on VMWare, and it sounds fantastic (although I do have to wonder about performance, even with enough ram ...) But the $199 price point is a difficult one to swallow. Maybe half of that would be palatable ...