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When you install windows, you are given the option to create partitions as part of the process, that's the easiest way to do it, sometimes partition magic can cause problems and there's really no reason to use it since you are starting from a blank harddrive.

During the install procedure, just select the options in windows install to create a new partition, make as many as you need, you can set the size on them one by one, but you can only format the partition you are going to install the os in during the install, you can go in later and format them through adminstrative tools, disk management feature, that works great.



Yes, absolutely, it's always easier and safer to partition the harddrive before installing os's on it. Keep in mind that Linux has to have it's primary boot partition before sector 1024, which is at around the 8 gigabyte point on your harddrive, so if you give windows about 4 gig, then create a single unformatted partition of around 8 gig for all of the linux stuff in the future, then a program and a data partition, you will be fine.

So your harddisk would have the following:

hd0a - windows, c:, 4-6 gig, ntfs
hd0b - future linux, unformatted, 8 gig
hd0c - programs, e partition probably, to taste, ntfs
hd0d - data, format in fat32 if you need to share data in the future between linux and windows, linux reads and writes to fat32 fine, apparently there are still problems with writing to ntfs for linux.

In the future, when you install linux, you just will need to mount drive hd0d, that's easy to do, then you can use the data for both windows and linux, that's the easy way to do it.

Also, of course, at some point you might install a 2nd sata drive, then you can pop on more os's.

However, keep in mind that while linux has no problem installing over windows, the boot loaders like grub or lilo just find all your windows os's and add them to the boot options, windows will wipe out all traces of the linux boot mbr, that's a pain to fix, so it's best to install all the windows you need before doing any linux or freebsd type installs.

I run windows 98, 2 windows 2000, one ntfs, one fat32, and a test xp, which I hate, on two harddrives, I have room for one more os. On another box I run w2k and redhat 8. I've run w2k and mandrake too, there's no real problems setting up dual boots if you install windows first, it's very easy, you'd be amazed. I've had freebsd recommended for advanced use, and linspire for super easy install, but all the commercial distros are super easy to install.

I'm leaning towards maybe checking out freebsd myself for my permanent *nix development os, I'm going to think about it a bit, debian also looks good to me though.

When you do a linux install, you select the option for it to partition the available space, that will be the free, unformatted partition, it does it all automatically if you choose that option, but there has to be at least 100 mB of space BEFORE sector 1024 for linux to boot, all the other stuff can be anywhere you want on the system, but I like to keep my main os's as close to the beginning of the harddrive as I can, it tends to work better over the long run.
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Okay, I didn't realize the Windows install process gave the option to create more than two partitions. My previous W2K installs have been on hard drives that had already been partitioned, so I've had no experience with the Windows partitioning. But, it should be fairly simple, like the rest of the install. Thanks for the pointers.
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