NTFS Installation Questions from the newbiest of newbies....

[rickenbacherus]

But why do I need 5 partitions? Why can't I just partition it like so:

/dev/hda1 primary NTFS wnixp 5G
/dev/hda2 primary linux swap 500MB
/dev/hda3 primary linux 3G
/dev/hda4 logical linux 4G

I guess I'm still not understanding the function of the "extended" partition. Would it be just another drive that I could store stuff on, and you described it as "extended" because the size of it would simply depend on how much space is left after the other partitions are defined?

Actually the extended partition doesn't hold anything except logical drives. In my example I list 5 partitions but there are only 4 that are actually available for use. You can't really do anything with #4. Besides- what about when you want to use the rest of the disc? Where are those partitions that you create going to go? Into partition #4 the extended partition.

[ph349397]

well, i'm only planning on installing knoppix and that's it, so I don't have to worry about having an extended partition. Despite that, I'm confused as to why in your example you would designate the extended partition as /dev/hda4? Wouldn't it make more sense to have the extended partition be the last partition? What I'm saying is, instead of

/dev/hda1 primary NTFS wnixp 5G
/dev/hda2 primary linux swap 500MB
/dev/hda3 primary linux 3G
/dev/hda4 extended
/dev/hda5 logical linux 4G

wouldn't it make more sense to do it like this:

/dev/hda1 primary NTFS wnixp 5G
/dev/hda2 primary linux swap 500MB
/dev/hda3 primary linux 3G
/dev/hda4 logical linux 4G
/dev/hda5 extended

[rickenbacherus]

That's not how it works. The extended partition is ALWAYS number 4. Even if you only made 2 primary partitions and an extended partition the extended partition would still be number four. You have to put logical drives inside of the extended partition. All you need to do is make some partitions- you'll see it isn't that hard.

[garyng]

I would suggest a FAT primary partition(C:\) of 2-5G. This can be very useful for passing back and forth data. FAT is the format almost all OS can understand. Beside, it is easier to find a copy of bootable DOS(!) which can be used to fix things stored on FAT like the BOOT.INI, or GRUB's menu.lst etc.