disk partition for linux

[anu]

I have a question, can I partition my hard disk in such a way that my current O/S windows 2000 will be on one drive say c: and I want to install linux on the other drive say d: and while partition into c: and d: (I currently have just c would I loose all the other s/w on win 2000? like visual studio.net, oracle .... ?

Is there a way I can do partition without loosing any s/w ? and just separate the hard disk into 2 pieces.

if I buy another hard disk, and format it, can I do something like load linux on the new hard drive only? and not touch the existing hard drive?


can somebody help me with this?

thank you
Anu.

[homey]

Hi,

If your hard drive is currently only one partition, you can't easily devide it into two partitions without 3rd party programs ($).
If you can get another hard drive, that would be the best (IMHO).

Before you start, back up any important stuff.

[TMAN]

FS is what's important. Is C: FAT or NTFS? If NTFS, you can't do it for free. If FAT then you just need to defrag, scandisk, and use the special software on most distro cds. I would reccomend just backing up and repartitioning and reformatting- it is simply A LOT safer. But the easiest route, I suppose may be to just put linux on a new drive if you have the dough and extra ports.

[jglen490]

If your W2K space is currently NTFS, and you have the means to get another hard drive, then installing Linux on the other drive is the best solution. It is possible to resize NTFS, but it can be dicey.

If your W2K space is FAT32, then your Linux installer can handle the resizing, usually done best via some sort of an "Expert" install mode.

Linux can write FAT32 with no problems as well as read, but writing to NTFS is at the very best highly experimental. Some users have experienced no write problems from Linux, others have whacked their entire NTFS filesystem space. Be very careful, NTFS is proprietary and finding out how it works is a very difficult task, thus the "experimental only" desgnation for writing to it from Linux.

The ideal solution is to have an NTFS partition for your W2K space, Linux on its own filesystems (of course ), and another partition that is FAT32 where you can store data files (mp3, jpeg, docs, etc) that are used in both OSes.