Re: New Installation Question

From: Lew Pitcher (Lew.Pitcher_at_td.com)
Date: 12/19/03 

Date: Fri, 19 Dec 2003 13:00:36 -0500

Neil Ellwood wrote:

> On Fri, 19 Dec 2003 07:25:36 -0800, Greg wrote:
>
>
>>mjt <mjtobler@ERASE-THISmail.ru> wrote in message news:<VlqEb.4140$wL6.2873@newsread1.news.atl.earthlink.net>...
>>
>>>On 18 Dec 2003 14:40:08 -0800, gwtx2@yahoo.com (Greg) wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>>1) Should I go ahead and create this partition with the XP setup
>>>>partitioning tool, or should I just leave this space alone and let
>>>>Linux create the partition(s)?
>>>
>>>... either, but i'd leave it alone
>>>
>>>
>>>>After you answer those questions, I have another scenario. I will have
>>>>a second drive (the old drive) which is a little slower than the new
>>>>drive. Would it be best to install Linux on the second drive, or does
>>>>it really matter?
>>>
>>>... i dont think it really matters.
>>
>>Thanks. If I leave it alone, and Windows assigns drive letters C, D,
>>E, F (CDRW). What will XP do after Linux installs. Will it rename my F
>>to a higher letter, or will it leave F alone, and name the Linux
>>partition G?
>
> Your windows drive letters should stay the same because windows cannot see
> the linux partition as windows tends to be dense compared to linux

Assuming, of course, that when you partitioned out your Linux partitions,
you didn't mark them as MSDOS or NTFS partitions in the partition table.

It makes a difference. MSWindows will ignore the partitions it doesn't
understand (like EXT2 or Linux Swap or Linux Extended), but /will/ assign
drive letters for the ones it recognizes (MSDOS FAT flavours or NTFS). The
problem is that, once the drive letters are assigned, Windows doesn't
recognize the partition format (it can't read an ext2 fs, for instance, even
if the partition was marked as a FAT16 partition), and wants to reformat it
into NTFS or FAT.

To avoid all this, make sure your linux partitions are set to the proper
partition types.

FWIW, here's the list that fdisk recognizes:
  0 Empty 1c Hidden Win95 FA 70 DiskSecure Mult bb Boot Wizard hid
  1 FAT12 1e Hidden Win95 FA 75 PC/IX be Solaris boot
  2 XENIX root 24 NEC DOS 80 Old Minix c1 DRDOS/sec (FAT-
  3 XENIX usr 39 Plan 9 81 Minix / old Lin c4 DRDOS/sec (FAT-
  4 FAT16 <32M 3c PartitionMagic 82 Linux swap c6 DRDOS/sec (FAT-
  5 Extended 40 Venix 80286 83 Linux c7 Syrinx
  6 FAT16 41 PPC PReP Boot 84 OS/2 hidden C: da Non-FS data
  7 HPFS/NTFS 42 SFS 85 Linux extended db CP/M / CTOS / .
  8 AIX 4d QNX4.x 86 NTFS volume set de Dell Utility
  9 AIX bootable 4e QNX4.x 2nd part 87 NTFS volume set df BootIt
  a OS2 Boot Mgr 4f QNX4.x 3rd part 8e Linux LVM e1 DOS access
  b Win95 FAT32 50 OnTrack DM 93 Amoeba e3 DOS R/O
  c Win95 FAT32 51 OnTrack DM6 Aux 94 Amoeba BBT e4 SpeedStor
  e Win95 FAT16 52 CP/M 9f BSD/OS eb BeOS fs
  f Win95 Ext'd 53 OnTrack DM6 Aux a0 IBM Thinkpad hi ee EFI GPT
10 OPUS 54 OnTrackDM6 a5 FreeBSD ef EFI (FAT-12/16/
11 Hidden FAT12 55 EZ-Drive a6 OpenBSD f0 Linux/PA-RISC b
12 Compaq diagn 56 Golden Bow a7 NeXTSTEP f1 SpeedStor
14 Hidden FAT16 5c Priam Edisk a8 Darwin UFS f4 SpeedStor
16 Hidden FAT16 61 SpeedStor a9 NetBSD f2 DOS 2ndry
17 Hidden HPFS 63 GNU HURD or Sys ab Darwin boot fd Linux raid auto
18 AST SmrtSlp 64 Novell Netware b7 BSDI fs fe LANstep
1b Hidden Win95 65 Novell Netware b8 BSDI swap ff BBT 

-- 
Lew Pitcher, IT Consultant, Application Architecture
Enterprise Technology Solutions, TD Bank Financial Group
(Opinions expressed here are my own, not my employer's)

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