Yet another partition question

[Demosthenes]

Currently, I have MS Win98 on C: partition (primary) and various OSes on other partitions (all inside extendedX). I want to put Red Hat 8 on a separate partition from everything else, but the only space I have is on the C: partition.

So, I want to destroy that partition and setup RH8. The only problem, is MS WinXP. Currently, my Linux boot manager boots to the C: partition which contains the Windows boot.ini and then that boot manager handles 98 and XP. But, if I delete the Windows C partition, what will happen? I have only ever setup Linux on extended partitions in free space, never on a primary partition.

If I destroy the Win98 partition and setup RH8 on it and have RH8 overwrite my current boot manager will it pick all the OSes up?

Also, Partition Magic 7 will not start on my WinXP partition. It completely crashes and hangs the whole system. Will not run under any compatibility mode and there are no problems with the drive. It works fine in Win98. Suggestions?

Respectfully,

Demosthenes

[David_Jones]

Hi Demosthenes,

If you only have one Primary DOS, and one Extended DOS partition (which contains multpile logical drives for the different OSs presumably), then why not shrink the existing primary partition, and create a new primary partition for RH Linux?

That way you aren't deleting the C:\ partition, and you avoid the boot loader being destroyed.

I believe that you can easily have two primary partitions and an extended DOS partition, and still have room for one more primary if you wanted it (subject to disk capacity of course).

I don't know much about Linux, but you might need to create another partition, outside of the extended partition, for the Linux Swap? I haven't tried using an extended partition - logical drive for Linux Swap, so I cannot help with that, but someone else might be able to jump in on that point.

Hope that helps!

David.