As Christian said, filesystems are specific to partitions, not drives. Given that, the way to have more than one filesystem on a drive is to partition/repartition the drive into multiple partitions; you can then format each individual partition with whatever filesystem you want.

Most Windoze users only have one partition which occupies the entire drive, so they tend to think of "drive" and "partition" as the same thing, and rarely have to delve into the concept of partitions at all. On the other hand, users of Linux, UNIX, BSD, etc. are usually pretty familiar with the concept of multiple partitions ("slices", in BSD terminology), because those operating systems often consist of at least two partitions. *NIX users are also much more likely to have more than one operating system installed on a single drive, because many of them also use some version of Windows.


FAT, FAT32, and NTFS are Microsoft filesystem formats; the most common Linux filesystems are ext3, ext2, and ReiserFS; none of which Windows operating systems can natively understand. Linux does have full native read and write support for FAT/FAT32 though, which makes FAT32 a good format for any partition that contains data that you might want to share between Linux and Windows.

For a dual-boot Win/Linux system where the Windows OS is on an NTFS partition, one common tactic is to create a separate FAT32-formatted partition dedicated to data shared between the two OSes.

XP can be installed on a FAT32 partition, but NTFS is prefered, basically due to the fact that it's more robust, efficient, and has greater networking and security related features.

It would be strange for someone to choose to do a fresh/full install of XP Pro onto a FAT partition, but it's certainly possible to do. Another way you could end up with XP on a FAT partition is if you upgraded an existing 95/98/ME installation to XP.

Even if you don't have your original setup disks, you can still convert from FAT/FAT32 to NTFS using XP's built-in "convert" utility. A bit more info on the process can be found here:
http://aumha.org/win5/a/ntfscvt.php

The convert process should leave your data intact, but it's definitely a good idea to do a backup before attempting the conversion.

OK, DMR, I've been reading all this with great interest, since I'm going to set up a unix machine soon. Since I don´t really need it but used to be a unix programmer, I can afford to be patient and do it the best way that I can learn how. Given that hard drives are so cheap, I have more than one option, although it would be nice if I could put three of them into one computer, which I don't believe you can do, at least with windows.

So, I'm going to use Win2Kpro, I don't like XP. Here are the scenarios I am contemplating:

1. One big HD with three partitions, one unix, one ntfs and the third, a smaller one with fat32.

2. Two HD´s, one with windows and the other with unix, whichever flavor. I suppose the smaller fat32 partition should go on the windows HD.

Your take? and opinion on which would be better? What size HD would you suggest in each case. I´ve seen 250GB at reasonable prices and that is a LOT more than I have in any of my machines at present, in fact, not even close.

Thanks

With a UNIX background, you shouldn't have much problem at all in a Linux or BSD environment. Although there are obviously some differences between all of the *NIX variants, I think you'll find most of the commands, file structures, programming tools, shells (sh, bash, csh, tcsh, etc.) available in BSD and/or Linux to be familiar.

Sure you can. Windows has nothing to do with how many drives you can have in a system; that's a function of the 'puter itself. Even if you run out of available IDE/SATA drive connections on the motherboard, you can always add PCI drive controller/expansion cards to give to you more room for growth. The only limits there are essentially the physical space in the computer's chassis and the size (wattage-wise) of the power supply.

Heck- one of the computers on my network (a lowly P-III 500 even) is multi-booting 6 operating systems: Win 98, 2000, and XP Pro, as well as two versions of Red Hat and one verison of Mandrake. Three drives, 24 partitions total, all co-existing happy as clams.

What you said about the fact that drives are pretty cheap now is true though, and given that, I'd suggest adding more drives as opposed to trying to repartition your current drive. You run less of a risk of doing something bad to your current Windows installation if you put any additional operating systems on their own separate drive(s).

In terms of suggestions on drive sizes, sizes and number of partitions, etc., have a look at the (*cough!* *shameless plug!*) resources here.

very nice, thanks...

The one thing I have noticed in all that I have read on the subject so far (just a trifle actually), is that the vast majority of *nix users don´t stick with one distro. They all seem to try, not two or three, but five, six and seven different ones. And each one has his own opinion and reason for using one.

I´m sort of amazed at this. Not asking for an explanation, this is just an observation on my part, which I´m certain is not unique.

I haven´t really paid much attention to this phenomena, since I am in the sales end of the computer business (where Win is king) and sort of let go of my programming roots but these days, I´m thinking of getting back in. unix seems like the best place to progress. I am having a hard time figuring out how these guys make money in that sector. Maybe in support. I hate to sink so low as to think about how to make a living but unfortunately, I have not as yet figured out how to survive without the dreaded...cash.

But it looks like fun and I appreciate the help on the subject, especially the reference - will be there...

Amazed? That's understandable; I think most people who live primarilly in the Windows World would have the same take on the situation. What usually happens with serious *NIX users though is that they will try many different distros to start with, will perhaps even use multiple distros for a long time, but will eventually decide on a single distro that fits them best. At that point, it isn't uncommon for them to become strangely religious about their choice; an almost evangelical thing which invarialbly leads to what are commomnly known as Distro Wars. These are not pretty; if you've ever run across those "evangelical" types of Mac users, you've only seen the tip of the iceberg I'm talking about. Put a die-hard Slackware user and a Mac zealot in the ring together and you'll see what I mean; just be sure to put your money on the Slacker! :mrgreen:

The basic thing is that *NIX variants, and Linux in particular, offer so many choices, and that isn't something Win users are very accustomed to.

- How do you want your desktop to look/feel/act? Hmm.... most Linux distros come with at least two GUI environments right out of the box, and many others are available as free downloads.

- Do you want to program? No problem- most distros come with a wide variety of programming/development suites (C, C++, Perl, Python, etc.) included as part of their installation package, and whatever else you might want or need is again just a download away.

- Web browsers? Linux users have had multiple choices of those long before Windows users even knew what a "Firefox" was. The same goes for email applications and other types of programs.

- Being open-source, even the operating systems themselves can be custom-tailored to your particular system. You can compile a Linux kernel such that it includes/uses only those features which apply to the system on which you're installing it. This means that, quite unlike Windows, you'll have no unnecessary processes/programs chewing up CPU, memory, and disk resources.

In terms of making money in the open-source world, keep in mind that open-source does not have to mean free. Sure- if you use a piece of someone else's code in your project, and that code is released under the GPL, you are bound by the terms of the GPL as well. However, if you write your own program from scratch, there's nothing stopping you from charging for it.

I love this thread...
The choices you have ... Everything on one large drive or multiple drives...
Either works just fine. I have both situations here on different machines.

I too have two distros that I use and another dozen I experiment with some of which are task specific. Networking, Windows recovery etc..

When a Windows user gets all of the free to try options we just go friggin NUTS....
Then we find one or even two and get back to work tinkering and tweaking it.

I run 98se fat32, XP fat32 (Sorry but I dislike NTFS), Ext3 swap partition, ext3 linux partition on this machine...

My Linux can read and write to either of my Windows partitions

And I would not be a true Penguin if I didnt say... Knoppix Rules... Others Droolz

Have fun..

Hello,

I resemble some of those comments by DMR! Mac people have a religious obligation to the platform. When you have hardware blessed by the almight God of Fruit, there are expectations to adhear to....

Seriously though...

Great discussion involving partitions, drives, and operating systems. Good to see the flexibility of the OS be explored here.

I am a Linux fan... my personal choice is RedHat, although I am migrating to Fedora Core on most platforms as time allows. If you really get deep into Linux computing, you will find that you will compile and install a bunch of handy tools (sendmail, webserver, ftp server, tape backup crontabs, dictionaries, web based email, graphical software, the list goes on...) and it is not often the case of an easy installation of an upgrade disk!

One thing I would like to mention to the readers out there... don't play with partition toys such as Partition Magic. That software works the drive over, and it would be very easy to corrupt your disk so that it turns useless. Always backup. I personally never use the utility, as I prefer to setup disks and servers from scratch.

Enjoy,

Christian

What? Steve Jobs is a fruit? Well I'll be... you learn something new every day.

:mrgreen:


Indeed. They don't call it Partition Tragic without reason; many users have had problems because they've prepped a drive with PM instead of just using the partitioning tools built in to a distro's installation routine. I don't believe this is as much of an issue with newer versions of PM, but I too prefer to use the Linux-native partitioning utilities when prepping drives.

lol. See- Distro War flame; what'd I tell ya'?