Marc Schimmler <mar### [at] icauni-stuttgartde> writes:

> Prez Midnite wrote:
> > 
> > Hi...
> > 
> > I've just purchased [not installed yet] a 10.2 gig hard drive, onto
> > which I intend to install Linux. I'd like to keep my current 1 gig hard
> > drive running Win95, and have a dual boot system.
> > 
> > Now my dumb questions:
> > 
> > 1) Will I be able to access my common files [POV, INC, TGA, MPEG, MP3,
> > HTML, etc.] from either OS? For example, could I render a .pov file that
> > is on my Windows drive from Linux POV, or vice versa?
> >
> 
> No question is dumb (nearly!). From Linux to the M$ world that's easy.
> You can automatically mount the M$ partitions and Linux will be able to
> read them and you can even write on them. 

As far as I know, this isn't true for NTFS partitions. Currently, there
is a read-only driver for Linux. So, if you're using NT, you should set 
up a (V)FAT partition for easy data exchange.


> > 2) The partitioning and formatting program that came with my hard drive,
> > EZ-Drive, is not compatible with Unix, according to the manual. How
> > should I go about preparing my new drive for Linux?
> > 
> 
> Depends upon the distribution. It would be normal to start Linux during
> installation using a bootable diskette or if possible CD-ROM. Linux has
> tools to partition harddrives and I found them to be very capable. SuSE
> for example is fitted with a installation guide that helps you through
> the steps. I don't know about Redhat, Debian ... I have only experience
> up to 4 GB but I had no difficulties during installation.

There are some limitations of the BIOS where to place the kernel. My
knowledge about this problem is purely theoretical, because my hard discs
are 1 and 2 GB large. Probably, you will buy a Linux distribution. Read
the sections about partitioning in the documentation that comes with it 
_very_carefully_. This will probably save you a lot of time and prevent 
you from reinstalling linux several times.

Thomas

-- 
http://www.fmi.uni-konstanz.de/~willhalm

Post a reply to this message