[Novices] Hard Drive Partitioning

[Bruce Smith]

> I bought a new 120Gb hard drive for an older system.  I still need the
> system to run Win98 but that is only occasionally.  I thought I would
> make this one a dual boot system to try out some of the Linux business
> apps.
> 
> My questions are: 
> A) What is the best way to partition this for the dual boot?  

Give yourself whatever you need for Win98 and the rest for Linux.

Or if this is really a _new_ drive, leave W98 on your old hard drive
and put Linux on the new hard drive.

> B)Should the swap partition be a primary partition or can it be a
> logical one?

Either, makes no difference.

> C)  I'd like to have 3 partitions for the windows side; an OS partition,
> a programs partition and a data partition.  I was going to make the
> program and data logical partitions.  If I do this would Linux be able
> to read the data partition?

Linux can read and write to FAT/VFAT/FAT32 partitions perfectly.
And Linux doesn't care if the partitions are primary or secondary.

 - BS