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From: rsmith@psych.colorado.edu (Roderick W. Smith)
Newsgroups: comp.os.linux.misc,comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc
Subject: Re: Drive Partitioning
Date: 25 Jul 1996 18:35:05 GMT
Organization: University of Colorado, Boulder
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Message-ID: <4t8eop$dim@lace.colorado.edu>
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In message <4t73f3$brc_001@evt-pm0-ip11.halcyon.com> - ameoba@halcyon.com
(ameoba)25 Jul 1996 09:13:44 GMT writes:
>
> Well, in the next few days I will be getting a new system, and
> it will have 2 2gb SCSI drives on it. I plan on running WinNT and
> Linux or FreeBSD (please, no rants on which is better. I'm not
> really in the mood for a religious war) along with a 300-500mb DOS
> partition to transfer files between the two (since NT and unix don't
> like eachothers filesystems). My problem is that I'm not sure
> about how to partition the drives so that I can boot off all 3 OS's.
> I'd like to have 2 gigs for NT, a gig for whichever Unix I go with,
> and maybe a 500mb partion to try messing around with the hurd...
Disclaimer: I use OS/2, DOS, and Linux, so I've no experience with WinNT or
FreeBSD, though I've followed some of the threads related to them.
Anyhow, I think the major issue you're likely to encounter here is the fact that
both DOS and WinNT want to boot, at least in part, from a C: partition (primary
on the first physical disk). It's unclear whether you actually must boot from
DOS, or just need a FAT partition for file transfers. I'll assume the former,
and you can modify it as you see fit if this isn't necessary. I'd recommend
keeping FAT partitions to less than 256MB in order to reduce the allocation
block size (less than 128MB is even better). I'd do something along the
following lines:
Drive 0: 2GB
~~100MB primary FAT (?) C: Windows NT Boot (minimal)
~10MB primary FAT C: DOS Boot
255MB logical FAT D: DOS files & common space
127MB logical FAT E: DOS files & common space
1556MB logical ext2 -- Linux Boot & root
Drive 1: 2GB
~30MB logical swap -- Linux swap space
2018MB logical NTFS F: Windows NT programs & data
This is intended only as a rough guide; you can increase or decrease partition
sizes as desired. A few things to note about it, though:
- I've split both the Windows NT and the Linux partitions across the
two physical drives (in terms of a boot/swap split for Linux and
a boot/programs split for NT). This will give you some speed
benefit from reduced head movements and SCSI concurrency. If you
have enough RAM ("enough" being a variable that depends upon how
you use the system), Linux might not use the swap file much, though,
and so putting part of the Linux filesystem (/usr/X11R6, say) on
one physical drive and the rest on another might work better.
- I'm ASSUMING that Windows NT won't be bothered by the Linux ext2
and swap partitions. If it is, you might have to change this,
possibly radically, so that ext2 and/or swap come after all the
Linux partitions.
- DOS sometimes (but not always) has problems "seeing" a partition
that comes after a partition type it doesn't understand. Therefore,
it's best to put all the FAT partitions first.
- DOS can only "see" one active primary partition per physical disk.
Linux doesn't have this restriction. I don't know about NT.
- Linux is happy booting from either primary or extended/logical
partitions. I've used extended/logicals for it simply to give the
option of adding another primary in the future without re-doing
the Linux partitions. (You might want this if you want to add
Win95, for instance.)
- You'll need to use Linux's LILO or some other boot loader (like
System Commander or [if you have OS/2 lying around] OS/2's Boot
Manager). LILO and System Commander install on the MBR of the
first physical disk. OS/2's Boot Manager chews one primary
partition. I'm ASSUMING that LILO will boot Windows NT; you might
want to try to confirm this.
- DOS sometimes formats all partitions when it installs, whether you
want it to or not. I'd therefore suggest installing DOS first.
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| Rod Smith Author of: |
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