Re: Problems partioning XP disk
On Mon, Nov 17, 2003 at 08:36:08PM -0500, Nathan wrote:
> On Mon, 2003-11-17 at 20:20, Tom wrote:
> > On Mon, Nov 17, 2003 at 08:05:58PM -0500, Eric Dickner wrote:
> > > What do we do for a "lossless" XP install?
> >
> > In the world of 'pooters, there's what you *can* do, and what you
> > *should* do. What you *should* do is called a "best practice."
> >
> > Here's what you *should* do:
> >
> > *Back up your data.
> > *Boot from the Windows XP CD.
> > *Delete whatever is the first partition on the first HDD.
> > *Create 1 partition for Windows and leave space for Linux, unless you
> > are going to install Linux on a 2nd HDD.
> > *Install Windows XP on the first partition of the first HDD.
> > *Install Debian wherever.
> >
>
> Alternatively, make a small (10mb) partition on /dev/hda1 and make that
> your boot partition. Then all you have to do is edit /etc/lilo.conf and
> set it so that you can boot /dev/hda3 (wherever windows is) just as
> easily as anything else.
Strictly speaking a weaker form of the best practice is: Windows should
be on the first fat or ntfs partition of the first HDD. It's okay if
earlier partitions are Linux types. Windows has one method for
enumerating partitions and assigning drive letters during setup and
another method for doing same after-setup. Various bad consequences can
follow. Of course I know how to deal with those consequences, but I
hate doing that shit. If you just always do HDA1=Windows, wierd shit
never follows.
The issues I'm talking about are subtle and don't show up until you
start to get into things like ghosting partitions, applying the recovery
disk, and working with old legacy apps.
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