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Originally Posted by Tristan
Pem, you really seem to know what you're talking about, so maybe I can run my whole plan past you and the rest of the guys here 
I currently have 80GB and 20GB ATA133 drives. I use Windows XP on the 80GB drive, and Linux on the 20GB one.
My plan went like this: to buy two SATA drives for use as a RAID array under Windows XP (my motherboard supports this). Then format my 80GB drive, and use that for Linux (and probably bin the 20GB one to make some room in my case). I'd probably allocate 10GB or so on the latter drive as a FAT32 partition, so swap data between Windows and Linux (Linux can't write to NTFS currently, and I don't know what the RAID drivers are like).
But it's just dawned on me that I could also put an image of my Windows installation CD, and possibly even the Suse DVD, onto that 10GB partion, and install from there. Far quicker and easier than using CDs. Is this possible, or am I dreaming? Could I boot using a Windows 98 floppy, change to the installation parition and then run setup from there? Does Linux have a programme that would start installation from MS-DOS, or do they *require* you to boot straight into Linux? And how would I go about setting up the paritions in the first place?
All answers gratefully received... and apologies if I haven't explained myself very well. It's late! |
Ditch the 20GB, it's probably only ATA66 anyway.
Set up a hardware raid 0 with the SATA drives, creating a logical drive of the whole size.
(If you don't have SATA raid and you have to use dynamic disks in XP, then if memory serves, create a small (10GB) system partition and instal XP on it, then once XP is up and running, convert the free space into a dynamic disk and the other SATA disk and combine them)
Bung your XP CD in the drive and boot up (you may need a SATA raid driver, in which case this should be on a floppy that came with your motherboard).
If you need the extra drivers, put them in when prompted and follow the on screen instructions.
Once you've got XP installed on the logical drive, you can then install your 80GB, partition it as you want it, copy across the XP and Linux cd's and install linux
It should then detect XP as being installed and set up lilo properly so you can dual boot.
(its been a while since I played with linux though)