Mandrake/Xp dual boot on 40 gig HD-NTFs question

[misterkhann]

Hi there linux gurus,

New to the forum and to Linux. First of all, there is a lot of great info here, thanks for putting so much time into responses to so many questions.

I have Mandrake 9 and would like to make a dual boot on my current system, which has XP on a 40 gb hard drive. With this setup, the drive is formatted NTFS, which I understand may cause issues with Linux.

My questions are, do I need to reformat the drive into Fat 32 in order to install Linux? To do this I would first need to repartition, as FAT 32 cannot be used on a drive with more than 32 gb. Is this correct? I know that I need to repartition anyway in order to have two operating systems, but when I tried to use the Mandrake installer to partition the drive, it was not able to modify the NTFS. Is it time to use Partiton Magic? Is there a freeware version or another similar tool available? Should XP be loaded first followed by Linux, or does it not really matter?

Thanks in advance.

[Budfred]

Welcome to http://www.pcguide.com/ubb/pcgubb.gif

You won't be able to use FAT32 or NTFS, Linux has its own formatting system. You will need to do some repartitioning and Partition Magic may be a good choice if Mandrake will not format on the NTFS partition. FAT32 can handle more than 32gig as long as you partition for large drives.

[mjc]

Actually what I would do is use PM or something similar and trim about 8GB from the current set up, leave it unformatted an run the Mandrake CDs...it will allow you to partition and format the now free space.

[misterkhann]

Just a followup for anyone interested.

After reformatting XP in Fat 32, Mandrake was able to modify the disk, use its own file system, and install with no problem. It created a dual boot without any prompting, it just took care of everything automatically. I was able to specify Gnome over KDE and the system (when booting linux) automatically loads gnome every time.

In short, setting up a dual boot with Mandrake 9 and XP was effortless.

[sleddog]

Well done.

There is an unanswered question however. Mandrake was unable to modify an NTFS partition. If you had done as mjc suggested (use PM to reduce the size of the NTFS partition, leaving space for Linux) would Mandrake have been able to install the boot loader and setup a dual boot with the primary partition formatted NTFS? I think "yes", but I'm not sure....

[mjc]

The answer is yes, because I did use a partition manager to to just that...make some totally free space (not formatted) on the HD and Mandrake did fine.

[misterkhann]

I'm sure this would have worked, but as I didnt have PM and wanted to reformat XP anyway, it was just easier to change the file system on the XP reinstall.

I do think it is a bit strange that Mandrake was unable to modify NTFS. I wonder if this is the case with all of the distros?

[mjc]

I think it is just XP's version of NTFS that it can't touch. It does have NTFS support, but I think XP's version is too new.

[sleddog]

Linux (Mandrake or whatever) has had NTFS read support for quite some time, but I believe write support is new and still experimental...