NTFS and Linux

[Madison Kelly]

Partition Magic (and the like) will work but they often induce problems 
that come back to haunt you. For example, I had a customer accidentally 
format a drive that had been setup with a partition magic-type app and 
it placed the backup FAT on a logical head higher than the hard drive's 
default logical head count so before I could restore the data I first 
had to re-write the number of logical heads. That was FAT but the point 
is I don't trust it.

With that said, I would strongly recommend, assuming you have not put 
any valuable data on the new laptop yet, to wipe and reinstall XP (and 
use FAT32 if you want to mount/read-write to it from Linux) and leave 
enough space to load Linux after. The reason for FAT32 (another good 
reason alone to reinstall) is that NTFS support is read-only with only 
VERY experimental write capabilities (and a very real chance of 
corrupting the NTFS File System) whereas Linux can easily read/write FAT32.

If you would like I would be happy to help you with it. Give me a ring 
at 416-208-0146 and we can talk more then. Best of luck!

Madison

Jim Skehill wrote:
> I just bought a new laptop by Toshiba and was getting all set to install
> Linux. (I installed Mandrake 8.2 on my Desktop machine just over a year ago
> and and was very happy with it.)
> But recently I found out that I may have problems because the laptop has
> Windows XP installed on it. XP uses the NT file system (NTFS) which provides
> a problem for most Linux partitioning tools.
> 
> As I see it I have 4 options:
> 1) Buy Partition Magic.
> 2) Blow away the existing install of XP, repartition the hard drive, install
> Linux, reinstall XP, etc.
> 3) Go to a Linux Install Fest. (Does anybody know if one is coming up in the
> Toronto area?)
> 4) Pay someone to repartition the hard drive and install Linux. (Who offers
> this service? How much does it cost?)
> 
> Any suggestions?
> 
> Regards,
> Jim.
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TLUG requests: Linux topics, No HTML, wrap text below 80 columns
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