> > ------------------------------ > > Message: 10 > Date: Tue, 9 Nov 2004 18:50:21 -0500 > From: "Lotsa Cabo" <lotsacabo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> > Subject: Dual Boot with NTFS > To: "(Group) Fedora" <fedora-list@xxxxxxxxxx> > Message-ID: <20041109235027.52D2F403A6@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" > > I have a laptop with XP on an NTFS primary partition. I would like to > install FC3 in the unused second half of the drive. I am assuming the boot > loader would end up being written to the MBR and the first partition (again, > the first partition is NTFS). Is this possible? > > Thanx, > Ryan Ryan: Haven't tried this with FC3 yet, but dual-booting works well on prior releases (RH6/7/8/9/FC1). FC2 had an installation issue that was scary, but work-aroundable; otherwise it works about as well as any distro I've seen. GRUB goes in the MBR, and the only difference you'll see is a GRUB screen for a few seconds when you boot. Some partitioning tools such as PartitionMagic provide the ability to format empty space as a Linux partition (using ext3 or ext2). But I've always had good luck leaving empty space on disk and letting anaconda (the Linux installer) take care of matters for me. Anaconda will call Disk Druid to prepare the disk. If you repair Windows in the future, it will overwrite GRUB with the Windows bootloader, but you can fix that with grub-install should it become necessary. Note that you can't mount an NTFS partition in write mode from Linux, but other than that, Linux will be very happy rooming-in with Windows. Enjoy! Erik
