Edited to clarify 8-4-03.

Problem: I boot from Knoppix CD, and the C: drive (NTFS) is not available to me. HDa1 is the drive D: recovery drive (FAT 32). HDb1 is the G: HD (NTFS). There is no HDa2. Both optical drives are available, as is the memory stick (provided that the stick is loaded in the slot).

My Hardware: I have an HP Pavilion computer (Pavilion 735n) that's approximately 6 months old, which came with an 80 MB HD, WinXP preinstalled. I'm not yet ready to jump to Linux, so I want to preserve the original configuration for now. So far, I am running Knoppix off the CD. For those of you unfamiliar with newer HPs, there are no backup CDs, and the factory HD is partitioned. The main partition is formatted in NTFS, and serves as my C: drive in Windows. The other partition contains all of the system recovery files, and is hooked into a system recovery utility, in case the registry gets corrupted or I do something stupid. This second partition with the recovery stuff is formatted in FAT32, and defined in Windows as D:. Drive letters E: and F: represent a DVD+R/RW and a CD-ROM drive, respectively. G: is an 80GB NTFS HD that I added. H: and I: are for photo flash ROMs (e.g., Sony Memory Stick).


Hypothesis: I have heard that Linux does not like having an NTFS drive contain the MBR, and that if you want to install Linux on a hard drive and select your boot option at power up, you have to have a FAT32 partition containing your MBR. I had assumed that since I was booting from CD, and Knoppix was not on the HD, that this would not be an issue. What I don't understand is why G: (an NTFS drive) is available and C: is not. I'm guessing that it has something to do with the MBR being on C:, but I don't understand why that is a problem when booting from CD.

Any ideas or suggestions?

If I have to partition the main drive to define another FAT32 partition for the MBR (which I may eventually do anyway if I get comfortable with Linux), can anyone recommend a good step-by-step? I'm a little bit reluctant to do anything to change the factory default Windows drive letter designations, in case I ever do have to recover the HD - I don't want it to barf if it's looking for C: or D:, but they are redefined as X: and Y:, for example. If I have room in D:, can I move the MBR there (since it's FAT32)? Can anyone foresee a problem with that?

Thanks for any and all help.