DescentBB

I'm building a new computer since my video card decided to die. I opted for a 320 GB Seagate 7200.10 SATA drive to boot off of. Lets say I want to dual boot (or if possible using the hardware virtualization run in parallel) Windows XP and Linux.

What sort of work do I need to do with the partitioning for Linux? I would prefer to set up Windows first, then once I had that settled I would install Linux. XP will be on a roughly 10 GB partition. Can I just leave some space on the drive unpartitioned and install Linux in it after Windows is done? If so, how much space does it require, will 5-10 GB be enough?

I run windows XP on a 7 GB partition right now and pretty much never have storage issues on C:. Also I would prefer that XP stays on C: I would like my drive layout to stay the same, C: XP boot, D: programs/downloads, E: 800 GB RAID mass storage. F: and G: removable drives, the Linux drives I would prefer to come after that. Anything special I need to do for installing Linux?

I don't really need Windows to see the Linux drive, but it would be a pain if Linux couldn't read the downloads and mass storage drive. Setting up a NTFS read only driver shouldn't be that hard correct? I also need some method of both OSes being able to write to a common drive so I can share data between them (preferably without having to use a FAT file system on anything but if there is no other \"safe\" way it would do).

hardware virtualization needs a supervisor.

IF you don't got VMware or VPC, then you are stuck with only dual-booting.

hardware virtualiziation only allows the client OS to access the hardware directly, rather than thru an emulated driver(ie you should get full 3d acceleration in both host and client.

Installing XP before linux is the sanest way to go.

my HD is set up oddly, so I can't use my linux partition directly(the boot partition is at the end of a extended partition). so try using a single partition for linux.

linux can read NTFS out of the box as root, there is third-party software that allows limited writing in userspace

Or at least you'll need root to mount it, but if you or your distro set this to happen at boot-up, this shouldn't be too problematic.

Yeah, Linux last is the better approach. Just like dual-booting between Windows, you want to install the \"smarter\" OS that will be able to see the other one last.

How much space? I'm only using ~4 gigs for my non-home partition, since all of my media goes on my home partition. My desktop PC likely uses a lot more, since it's got all those space-hogging games on it. Ten gigs should be enough if you're just dabbling and want some room to save a little bit of media, more if you want space for some games.

Is your RAID array \"FakeRAID\", i.e. provided by motherboard BIOS and your Windows drivers do the rest, or is it a true hardware RAID solution? If the former, FakeRAID is like the win-modem equivalent of RAID, and as such can be problematic with Linux. However, these days it can be done usually with some fiddling. Googling FakeRAID and your distro name will point you in the right direction.

I don't do software RAID, it is a BIOS level hardware RAID on a Silicon Image chip. Windows has absolutely no clue it is two separate hard drives. The new motherboard also has a Silicon Image RAID chip so moving the RAID from the old PC to the new one should be effortless since the Silicon Image chips store all the information about the RAID on the drives themselves. I'll likely continue storing all my media on the NTFS drives, thats why linux only needs to read it.

Windows and Linux aren't even going to be on the RAID chip anyway, they will be on a separate drive attached to the south bridge SATA ports.

And yeah, I thought hardware virtualization still needed some software to work, where can I get VMware or VPC and what do I need to know to set them up properly? (If either is free anyway, if they aren't free then I'll probably just stick to plain old dual booting.)

unless thats a 400 dollar raid controller, its software fakeraid.

hardware raid doesn't need drivers, last time I checked, my motherboard, which has a Silicon Image control, came with a floppy with drivers on it.
I wouldn't be surprised if yours did too.

as long as you are only using the RAID for data, you should be fine.

Cause you need to mess around with some stuff to get linux to boot off that fakeraid

Aye, I never even thought of booting off the RAID because a RAID0 has horrible access latency, even if it has insane bandwidth, and it is simply not reliable enough to boot from. I'll be booting off the 320 GB drive as a stand alone drive, I probably won't even attach the RAID till the OS is already up and running.

Definitely Windows then Linux. I've done it, and they're 100% right. Just out of curiosity, which distro were you thinking of putting on it?

Something easy for starters, but haven't entirely made up my mind.