Arch Linux

wirenik

Member

Registered: 2008-08-22

Posts: 134

What's the best way to partition my disk with Vista, Arch, and data?

Hey everybody, I'm in a bit of a quandary here and I'd love a bit of help.

I have a 320 GB hdd on my new laptop. I want to dual boot Windows Vista and Arch, with a shared partition for data in between. I have Windows Vista installed with 110 GB of unallocated space. (Windows, being a piece of crap, has gone and locked some stupid system files at the end of its partition, completely preventing me from shrinking it any further.)

Vista has hogged two partitions for itself. One is C:, and I know what that's for; the other is D:, and I have no idea what lives on it. (In the off chance that anyone here knows, I'd actually like to find out what D: is doing there. It takes up 77 MB, 65 MB of which is empty, and is always "in use," and yet Vista's file manager says there's nothing in it.)

ANYWAY: Vista's taken up two partitions, and I need at least two for Arch: / and swap. Ideally, I'd like to have one for /home as well, but i don't know if that possible. I also really, really want to have a shared partition for music and documents and such for both OSes.

I thought at first I could stick all of Arch into an extended partition, but I read here that they can't be booted from. It doesn't make any sense to put my data partition into an extended partition, and Windows won't work either. What should my partition scheme be, since I apparently am going to need to put 5 primary partitions on one disk?

If you've gone this far, thanks for reading my wall of text. Any advice you can give would be deeply appreciated.

UPDATE: Okay, after doing a bit more research, I've read in a couple of places that Linux can be installed to a logical partition as long as I make sure GRUB (installed, I assume, on /dev/sda) points to it. Can anyone confirm this?

Last edited by wirenik (2008-11-29 07:27:46)

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moljac024: No one really knows what happens inside /dev/null... it could be a gateway to another universe....
dunc: If it is, the people who live there must be getting pretty annoyed by now with all the junk we send them.

peart

Member

From: Kanuckistan

Registered: 2003-07-28

Posts: 510

Re: What's the best way to partition my disk with Vista, Arch, and data?

wirenik,

You can't have 5 primary partitions.  4 max, or 3 primary partitions, and a bunch of logical partitions grouped inside an extended partition.  Arch will gladly install into a logical partition.  (Yes, it will boot just fine too )

If you currently have 2 partitions, you could create one more primary, then use the rest of the disk as an extended partition.  You will then be able to create as many logical partitions as you want (well, a bunch anyway).

Something like this:
/dev/sda1 (primary, Windows C)
/dev/sda2 (primary, Windows D)
/dev/sda3 (primary, Arch root)
--- Extended partition ---
/dev/sda5 (logical, Arch /home)
/dev/sda6 (logical, swap)
/dev/sda7 (logical, shared data)

Last edited by peart (2008-11-29 07:26:07)

wirenik

Member

Registered: 2008-08-22

Posts: 134

Re: What's the best way to partition my disk with Vista, Arch, and data?

Peart, thanks! You posted at the same time I updated my post. That is exactly the answer I wanted to hear. I could go with the setup you suggested, or, if I dumped all of Arch into one extended partition, I guess I just make sure GRUB points to to the right logical partition (which according to your little diagram appear to be treated just like primaries), right?

Thanks again.

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moljac024: No one really knows what happens inside /dev/null... it could be a gateway to another universe....
dunc: If it is, the people who live there must be getting pretty annoyed by now with all the junk we send them.

peart

Member

From: Kanuckistan

Registered: 2003-07-28

Posts: 510

Re: What's the best way to partition my disk with Vista, Arch, and data?

Right.  GRUB doesn't make a difference between primary or logical partitions.  It doesn't matter if it's all on one partition either.  It just wants to know where to find the kernel so it can boot it.  For the above example, the menu.lst entry would be something like:

# (0) Arch Linux
title  Arch Linux  [/boot/vmlinuz26]
root   (hd0,2)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz26 root=/dev/sda3 ro
initrd /boot/kernel26.img

# (1) Windows
title Windows
rootnoverify (hd0,0)
makeactive
chainloader +1

wirenik

Member

Registered: 2008-08-22

Posts: 134

Re: What's the best way to partition my disk with Vista, Arch, and data?

Sweet! Looks like I'll finally be installing Arch onto this laptop. That makes me really happy. Thanks a million, Peart.

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moljac024: No one really knows what happens inside /dev/null... it could be a gateway to another universe....
dunc: If it is, the people who live there must be getting pretty annoyed by now with all the junk we send them.