ulrich: >>>> I think it's a good idea to have the systems XP und FC on different >>>> drives. Timothy Murphy: >>> Why? Tim: >> Ease of updates, for either. You can, very *simply* wipe off an entire >> disc and re-use it. Timothy Murphy: > Why do you want to "wipe off" an entire disk? You've not had to deal with cantankerous Windows? Where it might do what it wants to its drive, and bugger up another OS on the same drive? Where you had to replace a self-destructed Windows, where the easiest solution was wipe off and replace? > In any case, what is the "very simple" way of doing this? Zero out the beginning of a drive, use your partitioning software as if it were setting up a new drive. That's one simple way. Decent partitioning software would make it easy for you to do that in one go. > Personally, I remove the partitions I don't want, > and create the partitions I do want. All very well, if something else hasn't mangled the partition table up. Computer faults come in all shapes and sizes, some of them do strange things, and are right bastards to actually "fix". >> You can unplug one drive, and work with the other by itself. That can >> be handy for sorting out problems. > I can't think of any problem this would help with, > except possibly to determine if the drive was working. Things like that, and one drive going doolally, but it being hard to determine which one it is. Seen it, been there, got the tee shirt. > In fact removing one drive is far more likely to cause problems > than solve them (eg if part of grub was on the drive you removed). As always, diagnosing/repairing a problem depends on what it is. And what you've brought up depends on how you set them up in the first place. I had one system which had Windows on one drive, Linux on another. It was dual booting, but mostly on Linux. I did rip a drive out, and put one of the OSs onto another box. No re-installing, no re-configuring. Split one computer into two, just by moving one drive. Easy to do with a multi-drive system, time-consuming and painful on a one drive system. It's all dependent on what you want - flexibility, simplicity... >> If you want to optimise what partitions are where on the disc, to speed >> up access seeking, it's easier to do so for either OS, individually. > I doubt if it makes the slightest difference. There's a number of people who will argue, vehemently, with you that careful manual selection of what partitions are placed where on a drive make significant differences to responsiveness. You can only do that up to a point. If you faced a situation where your preferred best places for a partition for Windows clashed with where your preferred best places were for Linux, you're out of luck. >> It's really only physical issues, like those, that I can see as reasons >> for doing it. > In my view it was silly advice, > since it might lead a Linux newbie to suppose that there is some advantage > in getting a second disk, > which in my opinion is completely unnecessary. Opinion noted, and it will be soundly rejected by people who see advantages in multi-disk systems, and those with other experiences than yourself. There are some advantages, whether you see them or not. There are some definite disadvantages with single disc systems. The point is whether they're an advantage for YOU or not. > There are enough problems installing Fedora without inventing imaginary ones. Then there's the point of view that there's enough problems with installing a multi-boot system without having to deal with repartitioning a drive, particularly if it's full. If you have trouble with *that*, it's far easier to install onto another drive. -- (Currently testing FC5, but still running FC4, if that's important.) Don't send private replies to my address, the mailbox is ignored. I read messages from the public lists.
