How can you dual boot using Mandrake Linux and XP using 2 hard disks?

Answer

Always install XP first, then Linux, choose to overwrite the MBR when the linux installation prompts about the boot loader.

The Easy Way:

The easiest way is to have Windows on the primary partition or harddrive and to use program called Wingrub. The address is: https://sourceforge.net/projects/grub4dos . There are examples in the Wingrub program on how to set it up.

Answer

A good way I've found to "cheat" and make this a very simple task is to get a copy of Partition Magic. I don't like to spend money without a good reason, but this program is worth every cent. It can reformat drives for you, resize them, change the file system from one to another,like from a Windows FS to a Linux partition, and generally take the mystery and work out of many hard-drive related issues.Several times, when I've had to reformat and the new install of Windows didn't read the existing drives that weren't formatted, installing Partition Magic brought them right back. It also comes with Boot Magic, a program specially written to make setting up a dual boot system as simple as it can be. If you use Partition Magic to set up a logical drive for Linux, it even includes the swap file space so you needn't tinker with that. If you're a died in the wool geek, you won't need it. If you're not, or are just working at becoming one, this is a good way to make the path a little easier. Good luck.

Answer

1. First ensure that the disk is empty (obviously).

2. Grab a copy of XOSL, a graphical bootloader that is 100% GUI (quite a feat) and very easy to set up and use (http://www.ranish.com/part/xosl.htm)

3. If you want to get into the nitty gritty of partitioning, also get a copy of Ranish Partition Manager (http://www.ranish.com/part/). RPM comes with a "test" version - an "exact" copy of the "real version" except all the code that would actually modify your hard disk is removed in the "test" version - so you can get to know the application without fear of destroying any data. RPM still *is* a pretty advanced app with a lot of features though (it's also textmode) so it might not be for you - you might be better off with Partition Magic, as mentioned in the previous answer.

4. Familiarise yourself with whichever partitioning utility you choose and create 4 partitons: one for Mandrake, one for XP, one for XOSL, and one for your data.

"Why make 4 partitions?!", you may be asking. Well, the ones for Mandrake and XP are understandable, but since XOSL is actually a tiny OS all of its own, it's best to run it off its own partition (although it can run off a FAT32 partiton).

Creating a seperate partition for your data is for this reason: NTFS is a great filesystem, has very high performance, but *Microsoft never released the documentation for it.* So, all the Linux hackers out there went and figured out NTFS all on their own, and while they did an absolutely wonderful job at it, NTFS write code *may*, *just may* corrupt your data. It might. The Linux NTFS read code on the other hand seems to work really well.

Creating a seperate partition for your data lets you therefore use NTFS for Windows XP, ext3 for Mandrake, FAT32 for your data (or ext3 with a Windows ext3 file system driver such as IFS Drives (http://www.fs-driver.org/)), and FAT16 or FAT32 for the XOSL partition. Yes, you indeed could install XOSL into the data partition, but putting XOSL on its own partition eliminates the possibility of you accidentally deleting the XOSL system files and effectively having a broken computer (because without XOSL's system files, XOSL can't run, and in turn can't load any OSes, so you have a dead PC until you can boot up a DOS disk and re-install - and re-configure - XOSL again).

If you want an idea for partition sizes...

Windows XP - HD #1, 40-50GB Mandrake - HD #2, not really sure, 20-30GB? XOSL - either HD, 8-16MB (note MB, not GB) - if XOSL complains about insufficient disk space, increase the value Data partition - whatever space is left on each disk

Of course, your situation may call for completely different values so be sure to run the figures above by someone else if in doubt at all.

First answer by anonymous. Last edit by SnowHow. Contributor trust: 17 [recommend contributor]. Question popularity: 481 [recommend question]

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