[plug] Windows partition eating...

[Greg Mildenhall]

On Mon, 29 Mar 1999, Oliver White wrote:
> Hi, I heard that (re)installing windows will eat all non windows
> partitions, is that correct?
It shouldn't. At least, I don't know anyone who has found this to happen
to them, and I've known people to reinstall windows with a linux partition
elsewhere on the system.
What will happen, is it will overwrite your MBR.
If you are using loadlin to boot, then this won't be a problem, but if you
are using lilo of syslinux or whatever, then you need to boot from a linux
image on CD or floppy. (The Debian rescue image should be fine if you feed
it "rescue root=/dev/hd??" at the "boot:" prompt.)

> I have a dual boot, as is common. Two hard drives, one with red hat linux
> and one with windows 95.
> I've ordered debian 2.1, and while I'm reinstalling I want to reinstall
> windows (the install is about 2 years old, and it runs like a dog).
Are you going to trash your Redhat install or try to install Debian over
it? Either way, you might as well just reinstall windows, then install
lilo or whatever onto the MBR as part of the standard install process.

> However, I have no large storage media for a backup of my goodies, so 
> I'm in a quandry. I would like to first move my windows files to linux,
> reinstall windows then copy my linux/windows goodies to windows then
> reinstall linux, finaly copying linux.goodies.tar.gz back to linux. 
> Is there any way of doing this?
Yes. Use a boot disk or boot CD. Your Slink CD is bootable, and has a
bootable floppy image on it (see the Install Docs on the CD)

> I had the idea of disconnecting the linux hard drive while doing the
> windows installation. Does this sound like a sane idea?
It can't hurt. (assuming you know your hardware)

If you're not sure about anything, you'd be best to ask here before
proceeding,

-Greg Mildenhall