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Pastimes : Computer Learning

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To: Jerry in Omaha who wrote (39155)1/30/2004 12:18:02 PM
From: Elsewhere  Read Replies (2) of 110626
 
I was told that Linux appropriates its own naming system for the drives.

Yes, Linux supports virtual volumes. Physical drives can be attached to nearly arbitrary points in the directory "tree".

Linux chose E (System) & F (Active) drives. I don't think that means anything in the XP environment.

Yes, Linux has its own drive recognition sequence.

I would appreciate hearing any helpful suggestions on partition numbers, size and function.

It depends on what you want to do. In the Linux context it's important to mention that it is only able to write to FAT or FAT32, not to NTFS volumes (one more technology which Microsoft doesn't publish specifications for). NTFS can at least be read, though.

A couple of features I'm looking at are a partition on the big drive to store a back-up of the little drive, where I'll be keeping all my documents and copy folders of Program Files.

An on-the-fly backup of important documents can be useful but program folder backups without registry entries are sometimes of little help. An important part of any backup strategy is an off-site backup. For that you would at least need an imaging tool like Norton Ghost:
symantec.com
My own favorite backup tool is Dantz Retrospect:
dantz.com
An image is out of date if just a single bit of the original changes. Retrospect is able to manage incremental backups. If just one character of a file has changed compared to the last backup then just this single changed file is added to the backup.

I also want to install a copy of Linux on a partition on at least the little drive.

Which distribution are you considering? A frequent setup is one boot (32 MB), one swap (256 MB) and a root ("/") partition (5-10 GB). Before you install Linux on the hard disk I would first try a distribution like Knoppix:
knopper.net
Just download and burn the CD image:
knopper.net
... and boot from it, then you can play around and see if you like it. Knoppix doesn't touch your hard disk if you prefer so no need to create and later delete partitions.

What are other sensible things to do with partitions?

If you have very sensible data you might want to use one encrypted partition with the help of a tool like DriveCrypt:
securstar.com

Good luck!
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