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Partitioning

post #1 of 11
8/5/03 at 1:32am
Thread Starter 
When I get my 5680, I'm thinking about getting a 60 GB 5400 RPM HDD for a number of NTFS partitions for obvious reasons, then purchasing a 10GB Pocket USB Drive for continuing my fooling around with Linux.

Would I be better off/cheaper off doing:

60GB 5400 RPM + 10GB Pocket USB Drive
(partitioned NTFS) + (partitioned ext3 or ReiserFS or something)

OR

80 GB 4200 RPM
(partitioned 2 ways - 70 GB for WindowsXP and 10GB for Linux[separated into swap and such])

I wouldn't be getting into Linux until I know my system is working solidly and I had some spare time on my hands (Christmas break is a month and a half long at Westminster). What should I do?
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post #2 of 11
8/5/03 at 2:31pm
Can linux boot and run off a pocket USB drive? I'd think that would take some SERIOUS tweaking - not to mention installing GRUB or LILO on the laptop's HD to point at a pocket USB device for boot?

I have my doubts... Maybe you can run a LIVE CD version of linux, and use the 10GB pocket drive as your data / tmp space?

Ask one of our fine Linux guru's here about this...

-myrkat
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post #3 of 11
8/5/03 at 2:35pm
Thread Starter 
And now, I ask any Linux gurus to gather here and help me with my issues...!
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post #4 of 11
8/5/03 at 4:21pm
you can boot linux off of a usb drive. actually, they sell usb drives with mandrake pre-installed on them. but it's more complicated to do it that way.

i still think it would be better to just use a part of the hard drive. i don't know a whole lot about portable usb drives, but i would think that they're pretty expensive. i don't think it would be worth it unless you _really_ need to be able to take that usb drive and use it to boot up more than one computer. if you're just booting one computer with it, then you can just use its hard drive. and honestly, i wouldn't feel too comfortable owning a 10gig hard drive that could be forgotten and end up in the washing machine.

i would go for the 80 gig hard drive. or even the 60 gig hard drive, if you wanted the speed. either one is plenty for both windows and linux. and i don't know if a usb drive would handle complicated partitioning schemes as well as a hard drive could... i know i have 11 lvm'd partitions over three drives for my linux system, another for xp, and another for bsd.

and even if you don't like linux and want to get rid of it, you can just turn that partition into something else. storage, maybe.
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post #5 of 11
8/5/03 at 5:31pm
You have to have a computer that sees a USB device as bootable. My laptop doesn't. I have a USB 2.0 enclosure with my old laptop harddrive in it, and it works fine in Linux, abeit in 1.1 speeds, as a secondary storage device in /mnt. I don't think you will be able to get around not having a BIOS (or not easily, I don't want to tackle it) that supports this, since you have to load the kernel first before you even get USB support.
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post #6 of 11
8/5/03 at 6:15pm
Thread Starter 
I'm thinking I may go with the 80GB 4200 RPM. That way I'll have more space than I know what to do with, and I'll be able to experiment with Linux, and maybe even some others like FreeBSD or Darwin.
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post #7 of 11
8/5/03 at 7:08pm
If your computer won't let you boot off of a USB, then allocate a <1gig /boot partition for Linux on the hard drive. You won't miss the space, and that solves all your problems.
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post #8 of 11
8/5/03 at 10:31pm
Quote:
Originally posted by steve_416
If your computer won't let you boot off of a USB, then allocate a <1gig /boot partition for Linux on the hard drive. You won't miss the space, and that solves all your problems.
Couldn't one just install LILO (or GRUB) on the computer's hard drive (internal, hda) that points to the USB drive? Or is the USB drive not seen until a driver is loaded? I thought GRUB or LILO could see USB-connected drives... I may be wrong.

I suppose a small boot partition on the HD wouldn't be too intrusive. Of course, you could just boot off a LIVE CD version of your favorite distro... or something similar (bootable linux CD that points to the USB/Firewire drive once it has enough of the OS/mods loaded).

I don't know linux well enough to get into this, but it's a thought I have.

-myrkat
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post #9 of 11
8/5/03 at 10:53pm
Actually, yeah. You could pass root=/dev/sda1 to the kernel, but it would be SSSSLLLLLLLOOOOOOWWWW (1.1 speed, unless you can get USB 2.0 working). Regardless, you have to have something installed on the harddrive, so why not go all the way? 40 GB windows, 10MB /boot, 512MB swap, everything else /. Or 50 GB windows, etc., etc., everything else /. Use the USB harddrive for storage. It would be much faster. Oh, and get the 80GB HD. Those things are expensive to purchase aftermarket.

Although, I do have to admit, it would be pretty cool to have your bzImage and /grub/grub.conf on the same harddrive as windows, but you would be limited to only being able to use FAT32 or lower on that harddrive. You wouldn't be able to use NTFS (only beta support right now, and that is read only).
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post #10 of 11
8/5/03 at 11:28pm
Quote:
Originally posted by dirtboy
...Although, I do have to admit, it would be pretty cool to have your bzImage and /grub/grub.conf on the same harddrive as windows, but you would be limited to only being able to use FAT32 or lower on that harddrive. You wouldn't be able to use NTFS (only beta support right now, and that is read only).
Or just use a boot floppy that will point to either the NTFS/Win or ??FS/*nix. Yeah, it's slow, but cranked down enough, it's not too bad - only a boot, and both drives would be free of one another's presence.

I agree, though, running it from a USB external (especially if 1.1 speeds) is just short of chinese water-torture. At least a boot disk is only slow for the first minute or so before it kicks off the OS on a HD partition.

Oh well, I think the guy has more answers than he bargained for at this point!

-myrkat
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post #11 of 11
8/5/03 at 11:31pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally posted by dirtboy
Or 50 GB windows, etc., etc., everything else /. Use the USB harddrive for storage. It would be much faster. Oh, and get the 80GB HD. Those things are expensive to purchase aftermarket.

Sounds like I will go for the 80 GB.

I like the idea of setting aside like 60 GB for windows and the rest for Linux related stuff.

Hmm...ponders...
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