[plug] Partitioning Hard Disk

[Jeff Williams]

Well, as far as I know, IDE drives can have a maximum of 4 primary or 
extended partitions. A primary partiton has data on it, whereas an 
extended partition is divided up into logical partitions which contain 
data. So what does this mean to you?

First, you proabaly want Windows on a primary partition, since I don't 
know how it goes with logical partitions.

Next, divide up the rest depending on how many partitons you want. You 
seem to want 1 windows + 3 linux, so you may as well just have 4 primary 
partiations. If you wanted more, you would make one of those primary 
partitions into an extended, and add as many logical partitions as you need.

Finally, as someone else suggested, you are probably better off 
allocating the partition for windows, then setup all of the linux 
partitions during the linux install.

JEff

James Elliott wrote:

>I have built a new machine with a 20 GB HDD
>
>I want to partition it so that approximately
>10 GB is for Windows XP, and
>10 GB is for Debian Linux
>
>I was just setting up these partitions using Partition Magic:
>1.  10 GB NTFS  Primary  Active ... for WinXP
>2.  54 MB Linux Ext2 for Linux Boot
>2a   8 GB Linux Ext2 for /usr and so on
>2b   1 GB Linux Swap for Swap sapce
>
>However, when you create a partition PQMagic wants you to specify whether it
>is Primary,  Extended, or  Logical .... and I don't know what to do for 2.
>2a.  and 2b
>
>I thought the linux Boot partition should be Primary but got a warning
>message that Windows will only accept one VISIBLE primary partition and data
>may be lost if I boot into Windows.
>
>Should Linux be in an Extended partition or a Primary partition? ... and
>what should each Linux sub-partition be?  Primary or logical?
>
>As you can see  - I need help here  :o)
>
>James Elliott
>
>
>.
>
>  
>

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