Partition Wizardry

[Lennart Sorensen]

On Mon, Dec 19, 2005 at 12:45:45PM -0500, John Wildberger wrote:
> Suppose I delete the FAT32 primary partition on my first HD to give me
> two available primary partitions for use on the second HD.

Partitions on each disk are completely independant.  Nothing you do on
the first HD has anything to do with the second HD.

PCs allow 4 primary partitions per HD, or 3 primary and one extended
(which contains as many logical partitions as you want).  DOS and DOS
based windows only read the first primary partition they understand, and
any logical partitions they understand.  NT based windows might support
multiple primary partitions.  I never tried this since there didn't seem
to be a point.  It boots from the first primary partition after all.A

If you want to install 98 and XP on one system (why ever you would want
98 is beyond my imagination), then you should install 98 on c:, then
install XP, sicne it will tie it's boot loader into the boot sector of
c: and create a menu for both versions.  Installing 98 second won't
work.  Of course this means c: is FAT32.  You could hide the c:
partition by changing the type before installing XP, and then letting
grub manage which partition to boot, although XP will still want a
primary partition on the first HD then for it's boot sector.  You can
make grub hide the primary windows partition from the other windows
version when you boot it if you want to do that.  I barely understand
the desire for one version of windows on a machine, never mind two. :)

> Then I could install OS/2 (or alternatively Win98) on the first primary
> and use the second one as an extended partition for subdividing it
> into umpteen logical drives, one for FAT32 and the others for misc linux 
> distros.
> Do you think this would work?
> I am almost willing to go ahead and do it, if for no other reason than to find 
> out what is going to happen.

Windows only accepts one primary partition on each drive of types it
knows (NTFS/FAT).  Any other primary partitions it ignores.  It does not
like having logical partitions as far as I know on a drive that doesn't
have a primary partition, but XP (and NT based in general) may not mind
that.  I have never tried that personally.

You can certainly do something like this:

hda1: Windows C:
hda2: Linux /
hda3: extended
hda5: swap
hda6: other linux partitions or other windows partitions
hda7: same as above
etc.

hdb1: Another windows drive or maybe OS/2.  I know very little about OS/2
hdb2: could just be extended or you can have more primary partitions for
      linux if you want.  Linux doesn't really care which kind they are.
hdb5: more partitions of whatever type you need.

Len Sorensen
--
The Toronto Linux Users Group.      Meetings: http://tlug.ss.org
TLUG requests: Linux topics, No HTML, wrap text below 80 columns
How to UNSUBSCRIBE: http://tlug.ss.org/subscribe.shtml