Formatting when an OS already exists?????

[kempfera]

I have just gotten my gentoo disks

I was wondering what would be my best approach to formatting:

PIII 800mhz
768Mb Ram
1x120Gig HD (60Gig=hda1 has WindowsXP installed)
1x80Gig HD (Empty)
1xCD RW

I don't want to get to far ahead of myself, but I am a little confused about how to set up the partitions, not the partitioning itself.

Would it be best to just start with a basic format, Boot, Root, Swap, and add additional partitions later?

As an end result I would like to have this box setup to do as much as possible server wise, Webhostin, Mail Server, NTFS.............

Since WinXP is already installed as hda1, do I still need to create the three basic linix partitions?

I apologize if this is already listed somewhere else but I haven't been able to find a post relating to formatting a disk with an already established operating system.

And my last question, I know that Fdisk is the application talked about in the "How To Handbook", but I have read a post in this formum before about another application that may be a little easier to use and follow to do formatting. Could someone please give me the name of this other formatting application?
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[Maedhros]

You don't need to create a /boot partition... there is an early thread on this forum somewhere about its benefits / drawbacks, but I can't find it any more unfortunately...

Apart from that, I think it would be best to start with the basic partitions. You'll still need them despite WIndowsXP, as Linux can't easily be installed on that partition. And I think the program you're looking at to create said partitions is cfdisk. I find it much easier than fdisk personally.

Hope this helps!
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[kempfera]

[coren2000]

if nothing else /home should have its own partition.

so very minimally you should have
hda1 = winxp
hda2 = swap
hda3 = boot
hda4 = / (root)
hda5 = /home

you might also want to put /var in its own partition too.