is it best to have linux on a separate hard drive from windows entirely?

[pennylane]

My friend had windows xp and fedora core 3 linux on the same hard drive (but different partitions). He said he had trouble reformatting and reinstalling (install errors and difficulties) because to wipe the master boot record, he had to reformat the entire drive, including the partition that has windows. He said because of this and other reasons, upgrading linux or replacing it entirely was a pain when it was on the same hard drive as windows. He had this issue with fedora core 3.

It would be much more convenient for me because of hard drive size to install linux on the same hard drive (but different partitions) as windows. Will this be a problem in fc4?

How about other flavors of linux?

How do you replace/upgrade linux? Was it a problem in fc3?

 

[stars]

It shouldnt be hard to install/remove Linux on the same drive or a second one. I don't know alot about FC3 or 4 (been years since I used any form of Redhat)

When I upgrade to a new version of Linux I format the drive/partition and do a fresh install.

 

[P0ldy]

Your friend didn't know what he was doing. You can reinstall the vanilla MBR in MS Recovery Console and Grub/Lilo will disappear (and you can safely delete your Linux partition--otherwise you might not be able to boot to an OS, but, like I said, MS Recovery Console can fix that). Getting Linux off your system is as easy as getting it on.

Not having put FC on my harddisk, I can't say for certain. Though I can say that I've installed SUSE, Ubuntu, MEPIS, and Mandriva along side a Windows partition on the same hdd and never had any problems, installing or removing. All those distros and FC too I think will recognise your Windows partition and not touch it unless you tell it to. If by 'upgrade' you mean the kernel, you shouldn't have to reinstall a distro to do that.

But personally I found running a dual boot system a hassle.

 

[n0cmonkey]

I prefer to have it on a different computer.

 

[TGS]

I like to have two machines up so I can test on one, and be able to leave it in an in-op status. Leaving the other to jump on and look up error codes, or howto docs.

 

[pennylane]

hmm... I see. Also, can Linux read NTFS file systems these days? Not necessarily be installed on NTFS, but can it read them?

 

[n0cmonkey]

Yes.

 

[nweaver]

don't think FC has support out of box (have they changed this craptastic policy?). You can always compile it into your kernel if you want. They have NTFS write support, so you could install it on NTFS (technically speaking) but it's a bad bad bad idea.

NTFS read support is find, NTFS Write support is said to be buggy (I don't use it). I normally have a seperate machine, but when I do dual boot it's fine, as long as you understand how your bootloader works/where it's located/etc. Also, not sure about FC, but I didn't have to wipe my box when I upgraded on Gentoo, I just had to change portage profiles, sync, and recompile kernel and a few things. That was moving from 2004.1 w/ 2.4 kernel to 2005.0 w/2.6.11 kernel. That laptop works great too! Perhaps since FC is easier/quicker to install, they don't worry as much about upgrades?

 

[pennylane]

So it's still buggy writing to different NTFS partitions? So if I wanted a partition I could access by both linux and windows XP, it'd be best if it were FAT32?

 

[nweaver]

yes, Fat32 would be best. NTFS MIGHT work, chances are you would have to compile your own kernel for support, and it may hose that patition eventually, due to bugs in the current code. If you make a seperate "shared" partition, that neither OS requires, then it wouldn't matter much if it dies, as long asyou were performing regular backups of any critical data on that partition.

 

[TGS]

Originally posted by: nweaver
don't think FC has support out of box (have they changed this craptastic policy?). You can always compile it into your kernel if you want. They have NTFS write support, so you could install it on NTFS (technically speaking) but it's a bad bad bad idea.

NTFS read support is find, NTFS Write support is said to be buggy (I don't use it). I normally have a seperate machine, but when I do dual boot it's fine, as long as you understand how your bootloader works/where it's located/etc. Also, not sure about FC, but I didn't have to wipe my box when I upgraded on Gentoo, I just had to change portage profiles, sync, and recompile kernel and a few things. That was moving from 2004.1 w/ 2.4 kernel to 2005.0 w/2.6.11 kernel. That laptop works great too! Perhaps since FC is easier/quicker to install, they don't worry as much about upgrades?

I could have sworn FC comes with the read support, just not the write support.

As for a gentoo install you can just pull down whatever kernel prior to actually loading the rest of the system. IIRC they include quite a few kernels on the installation CD, along with being able to pull other kernels via portage while at the install stage.

I know it's lazy but I really like how easy it was to grab a kernel rpm, and it does all the editing to the grub.conf along with all the typical kernel install functions. One of nice things FC can do. I've never used portage to update a kernel, so there may be some similiarities to the operations.

 

[shud]

I'm going to be installing FC4 on my old box here in a few days and will probably be throwing my 400gb of storage drives in there as well to aid in cooling in my gaming/application machine which will still be running Windows XP. I will most likely download to those NTFS drives over the network. I've heard that Linux/Unix usually have no problem mounting NTFS drives, and I don't anticipate running into any problems mounting them and then writing from Windows-->switch-->drives. Am I wrong in this assumption?

Also, one of the drives is currently hooked up via an ATA133 PCI card. Is that going to cause problems?

 

[nweaver]

Yes, but recompiling your kernel by hand is easy in gentoo, and if you do that in FC4, you would probably have to edit grub by hand. That is why I like gentoo for learning the deep workings of linunx.

Last version of RH I used was 9, and it did not have ntfs or MP3 support at all, and I though the RHEL3 box I played on for about 10 minutes did not either.

To Shud, I would convert those to a different file system (xfs or ext3) if they are going ot be running on linux. Once they are in the linux bos, it's all SMB to windows.

 

[n0cmonkey]

Originally posted by: shud
I'm going to be installing FC4 on my old box here in a few days and will probably be throwing my 400gb of storage drives in there as well to aid in cooling in my gaming/application machine which will still be running Windows XP. I will most likely download to those NTFS drives over the network. I've heard that Linux/Unix usually have no problem mounting NTFS drives, and I don't anticipate running into any problems mounting them and then writing from Windows-->switch-->drives. Am I wrong in this assumption?

Also, one of the drives is currently hooked up via an ATA133 PCI card. Is that going to cause problems?

Linux has issues writing to NTFS, use a better supported FS. The fact you're writing to it over the network doesn't matter, it's still imited by Linux's limited NTFS support.

 

[shud]

Originally posted by: nweaver
Yes, but recompiling your kernel by hand is easy in gentoo, and if you do that in FC4, you would probably have to edit grub by hand. That is why I like gentoo for learning the deep workings of linunx.

Last version of RH I used was 9, and it did not have ntfs or MP3 support at all, and I though the RHEL3 box I played on for about 10 minutes did not either.

To Shud, I would convert those to a different file system (xfs or ext3) if they are going ot be running on linux. Once they are in the linux bos, it's all SMB to windows.

Yeah but can I do this without formatting them? They're FULL as it is.

 

[nweaver]

no, you will have to free up space. there is no ntfs2ext conversion utility.

 

[TGS]

Originally posted by: shud

Yeah but can I do this without formatting them? They're FULL as it is.

You are repartitioning tool to free up some dedicated space for linux. Starting a linux install on NTFS is asking for problems. Just give yourself about 10-20GB to play with and it should be more than enough. Unless you are converting over completely. For playing around 10-20GB will give you room to install Everything-and-the-Kitchen-Sink? and download plenty of programs.


Especially with FC, due to IIRC they don't include the native write capabilities in the default Kernels. So already you have to go get a custom kernel to install and are just adding another layer of complexity.

Originally posted by: nweaver
Yes, but recompiling your kernel by hand is easy in gentoo, and if you do that in FC4, you would probably have to edit grub by hand. That is why I like gentoo for learning the deep workings of linunx.

Last version of RH I used was 9, and it did not have ntfs or MP3 support at all, and I though the RHEL3 box I played on for about 10 minutes did not either.

Yeah, I was using the mythtv howto on loading it up. I can't remember if it was a scripted kernel change or if the kernel rpm updated grub. Though it did do everything, related to booted up to the new kernel, and modified the grub entries so the old kernel was still accessable.

As for MP3, and DVDs other distros have support for them. Which is yet another reason why FC IMO doesn't make the grade as a newbie distro. You still have to do unneccesary steps to enable whats already configured in other flavors.

I still highly recommend a stage3 gentoo install. Easy to load(great step-by-step guide) and you can tell everyone your apps are specifically tuned for your hardware.

Portage is fairly nice to update with, as long as the ebuild isnt borked. Which I have yet to run into.

 

[shud]

Originally posted by: TGS

Originally posted by: shud

Yeah but can I do this without formatting them? They're FULL as it is.

You are repartitioning tool to free up some dedicated space for linux. Starting a linux install on NTFS is asking for problems. Just give yourself about 10-20GB to play with and it should be more than enough. Unless you are converting over completely. For playing around 10-20GB will give you room to install Everything-and-the-Kitchen-Sink? and download plenty of programs.

I suppose I should have clarified. My new gaming/heavy use rig is only going to be sporting an 80gb SATA drive. Currently the system I'm using (which will be the FC4 machine) has:

20gb OS drive
250gb for fan-subs, porn, etc.
160gb for MP3s

I want to keep the same settings. The 250 and 160 are purely storage, I won't be running any Linux applications or anything like that on them.

 

[corkyg]

A good clean alternative is to have one computer that can be quickly a second computer. How? Use a mobile rack and have two separate inner trays - a hard drive in each. One is Windows and the other Linux. You will never get mixed up that way and they will never step on each other nor will their applications get in the way. Each is a clean machine.

 

[shud]

Bump. Someone has to have an answer for my last question.

 

[n0cmonkey]

Originally posted by: shud
Bump. Someone has to have an answer for my last question.

You cannot convert to a better Linux filesystem from NTFS.

 

[TonyRic]

NTFS read-only is available in all distros that are not from RedHat/Fedora (AFAIK), but you can compile or download the NTFS read modules without any problems at all. Also, it just works.

As for NTFS write, this is an animal of a different color. But, it all boils down to security. If you have any ecryption on the NTFS partition at all and attempt to write to that partition, you WILL corrupt all or at least part of it, potentially rendering the OS installed on it inoperable. Writing boils down to NO ENCRYPTION == NO PROBLEM.

 

[Basie]

I have a multiple boot with WinMe, WinXP and a number of Linux Distros, 14. I don't mess with NTFS for that reason. Though I can see the value of NTFS if using WinXP exclusively. FAT32 provides an easy
platform from which to access any of my OS's. I use WinMe only for certain older games and WinXP for
about everything else. The Linux Distros are strickly for learning and playing aisle riot solitaire and very rarely checking out the porn sites.

 

[timswim78]

Originally posted by: n0cmonkey
I prefer to have it on a different computer.

Word!

I tried dual booting and never learned anything on linux. Then, I setup a KVM with one windows machine and one linux machine. After that, i picked up linux in a hurry.

It just takes forever to reboot the machine back into windows when you get stuck in linux and need to get onto the Internet from windows in order to find an answer to a question.

 

[magomago]

hmmm so as long as I don't have encrypted files on my NTFS partition, I can write without worrying?