Partitioning my hard drive for redhat

[mechanicalbrain]

I want to partition my hard drive so i can also run redhat (either that or run Linux on a second hard drive). Want to know if people had any advice. I'm wondering about things you only learn from experience like a friend told me I need to install windows PX first. Things like that. Also Ive heard some horror stories about people losing access to some of their hard drive's memory after partitioning . What would be easier, partitioning a hard drive or running a second hard drive for linux? What should I be aware of and is their anything else I should also do?

[sciguy125]

A second hard drive is the best method. That way, you won't have to mess with your Windows partition. Whether you resize the partition or format and redo it, if you're not careful, you might lose some data in the process.

And yes, to save yourself from a headache, you should have Windows installed before Linux. The problem is that Windows isn't happy unless it's written to the beginning of the drive. Linux, on the other hand, could care less where it lives.

You may also want to keep a small FAT32 partition around somewhere. Linux is able to read NTFS (the current Windows filesystem) but Windows can't read ext3 (or ext2 if you decide to use that). As far as I know, the Linux NTFS capabilities are still experimental. Reading is supposed to be safe, but writing could cause serious problems. The only filesystem that both systems have in common is FAT32.

Good luck. May Tux watch over you and your system.

[Ryan M.]

Yes, you may lose a mb or two due to partitioning, because partitions can only start and end at certain points on a hard drive. However, it's not too much to worry about.

I'm not sure if the Redhat (or Fedora Core) installer can resize NTFS, so you'll need to get a live or installer CD which has the necessary tools. I'd recommend Gnoppix, which is just a retool of the Ubuntu live CD. (It includes gparted, which can do what you want.)