Partitioning for Linux

[Pc_Madness]

Hey guys, I've been trying to find a dumbest of the dumb tutorial for setting up a duel boot of Debian and WinXP Pro, and I can't find much, so I was hoping you guys could point me in the right direction.

I have a 20gb (well, 18 something) harddrive, with XP and its taking up about 7gb at the moment. What partitions/sizes/locations do I need to create to duel boot, and keep XP in tact? I have Partition Magic, and I have two LiveCD distros that I can use, but I'd prefer to do it all in Windows.

Thanks in advance.

[Sastraxi]

FIRST
BEFORE
YOU DO
ANYTHING
ELSE

You must defragment your harddisk FULLY.

Cut your XP partition down to 14 gigs or so and give linux 6 of UNPARTITIONED space. Don't try to use PM to make the partitions, as I've flubbed that before. Use cfdisk in a LiveCD (I do hope you're using Gentoo ).

[Pc_Madness]

My LiveCD will most definitely be Knoppix. (the other is DSL)

How do I use cfdisk?

And, will Debian create the necassary partitions for me?

[Sastraxi]

No, you will have to create the partitions yourself. It's quite simple, you'd probably make your CFDisk look something like this (from memory). hda1 is your existing partition.

table headers
-----------------------------------
hda1    BOOTABLE   14000mb
hda2    --------------  EXTENDED
hda5    BOOTABLE   50mb
hda6     --                5000mb
hda7     --                500mb

You'd change hda5/6 types to be linux native (it's 82 or 83), and hda7's type to linux swap (its the other one of 82/83). Then reboot to make sure it's written, and format hda5, 6, and 7 with the filesystems of choice.

[Pc_Madness]

Whats hda2? :unsure:

[Pc_Madness]

I tried to use DSL to do the partitioning with cfdisk, but it won't let me as its like protecting the NTFS drive or something. :dunno:

Are you sure I can't just do something like this?

http://www.powerquest.com/support/primus/id3983.cfm

[Lightning]

You cando that IF you have Partition Magic. Maybe there is a trial version around somewhere....