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Fresh install and old xp

AWB70
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Fresh install and old xp

I'm going to put 10.04 on my desktop which currently has xp and 9.10 dual booting, the machine has two HDD's in it and was thinking of throwing everything over onto the 2nd drive I want to keep and installing it to the 1st drive.
Will the install process leave my 2nd drive alone and if so after installation what file system should I format the 2nd drive in once I have put everything back into peoples accounts?
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HairyMcbiker
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Re: Fresh install and old xp

The install will no touch your second drive UNLESS you tell it to use it.
If you want to keep permissions then it needs to ext3/4,
I have almost everything now on ext4 (I am having to revert a couple of disks as my new nas box can't handle ext4 only ext3) and haven't come across any issues  (other than you need a new copy of clonezilla to read ext4)
AWB70
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Re: Fresh install and old xp

Always there cheers m8  Wink Looks like its going to be a long night, best make sure I have plenty of coffee  Grin
I don't fully understand the complexities of ext3/4 but I'm guessing that 3 is the least problematic and ok for me to use in an everyday situations?
Wife and daughters away on holiday so I'm going to do this while there away and try and keep all their stuff, hopefully I can get everything working properly before they get back so I don't get phone calls at work saying this or that won't work and they can get used to it they way they worked with windows.
VileReynard
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Re: Fresh install and old xp

ext3 has been the standard file system for many years.
ext4 has been around for a couple of years - no really compelling reason to use it for home installs.
Assuming you have a swap partition, you might like to use it for both linuxes...
Make sure you do the custom install, so that you get asked to confirm each stage.

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HairyMcbiker
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Re: Fresh install and old xp

ext4 is supposed to be faster, can't say I have really noticed any difference though.
For compatibility stick with ext3 for now.
AWB70
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Re: Fresh install and old xp

Couple of problems on two set ups, firstly my desktop which has new 10.04 on there seems to be some problem with graphic drivers. The screen flickers and dims of it's own accord. I don't think its the monitor it's never did it when it had windows on and I did notice a similar thing when I was dual booting that machine with 9.10. I am using the reco driver in ubuntu hardware drivers at the moment. If I deactivate the driver I don't get the flickering but my GPU fan runs constantly at high speed.
Would you suggest trying the other two built in drivers that ubuntu has to offer or see if I can find a dedicated linux driver. It's a nvidia 6800gt BTW.
The laptop I took 10.04 off and the XP back on now has one partition on, I prefer 2 one for the OS and one storage. Unfortunately because the XP is only a restore disc not full install I didn't get the option to re-partition the disc so I have ended up with one system file partition with 3 gig of unused space which I guess was the old linux swap file area.
Is there a way to repartition the disc while it has an os running on it without paid for software? I was wondering maybe I could use Ubuntu Live CD but not sure if it formats in NTFS.
Any help appreciated.
VileReynard
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Re: Fresh install and old xp

There are two logical steps:-
partitioning is quick and just says where the various partitions start and finish.
Formatting is when you actually create a file system on a partition - such as ext3 or NTFS.
But altering an actual running OS is fraught!
Altering a disk with an OS (but not running) is perfectly fine though.
gparted (or equivalent) from Ubuntu live can do:-

"In The Beginning Was The Word, And The Word Was Aardvark."

AWB70
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Re: Fresh install and old xp

Thanks, I had heard about gparted and wondered if it would do the job. Just wasn't sure how this was going to work with a live M$ OS on the same drive.
HairyMcbiker
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Re: Fresh install and old xp

Boot from the live cd, then choose gparted from the menu, choose the partition and choose to resize it - THIS WILL TAKE A LONG TIME to complete.
After you have resized it you can either use the free space to make a new partition for you data or install Linux into it,
AWB70
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Re: Fresh install and old xp

Quote
THIS WILL TAKE A LONG TIME to complete.

The one thing I have is time  Smiley The HD is only 40gig and I only want to format 20gig of it so might not be as long never tried it though just wishful thinking.
Will gparted also manage to merge the leftover 3gig of unused space in with the pending second partition, I'm aiming to take half of the c drive that's there, merge it with the empty space and create 1 d drive ntfs from them.
BTW not enough space on disc really for dual booting or I would.
HairyMcbiker
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Re: Fresh install and old xp

Yes you can do anything (relate to disk/partitions) using it.
You will able to delete the Linux swap partition, resize the NTFS partition and make a new NTFS partition for the data.
WRT 40Gb not being enough... I have a complete 10.04 system on my EEE in 4Gb (with space left over!)
AWB70
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Re: Fresh install and old xp

I have the XP though on the same drive and need a bit of space with some to play with, although it has to be said after finding out last night I can get my o2 usb dongle to work on linux that only leaves my mobile software and sage to sort and I could have left ubuntu on there in the first place  Shocked
Never mind, I was needing to get it sorted out straight away. I'm having to work at night in hotel after being on site so I don't need much encouragement to stop, any compatibility errors would have ended up with me in the boozer spending money when I should be earning it.  Grin
HairyMcbiker
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Re: Fresh install and old xp

Mobile s/w is probably the killer (I keep an old lt with xp on it purely for flashing stuff!)
Dongles usually "just work" I use a 3 one and have had no problems with it.
AWB70
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Re: Fresh install and old xp

With the o2 one I have apparently the connection software is kept on the dongle itself which doubles up as a memory stick reader. The secret is to prevent the software from running when you plug it in and manually create a USB connection.
HairyMcbiker
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Re: Fresh install and old xp

Thats the same as my 3 one, the default is to mask the "cd" part and connect to the modem on mine.