Installing Gentoo Later

tavilach · n00b Joined: 11 Jun 2005 Posts: 5

I don't want to install Gentoo right now, but I am about to reinstall Windows XP, and I'd like to install it in a way that will make dual-booting Gentoo as easy as possible. Should I make a 20 GB XP NTFS partition, a 60 GB FAT32 shared files partition, and leave the rest free? Does the Windows XP installer let me select FAT32?
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Lajasha · Posted: Tue Jun 21, 2005 8:20 pm Post subject:

The fat32 is great if you plan to write to the windows partition from linux. If you dont plan on doing that then ntfs is fine.
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Crisis · l33t Joined: 10 Feb 2003 Posts: 613 Location: Portland, OR

I'd make a small /boot for gentoo, an NTFS partition for windows, really shouldn't need to be more then 10gb or less depending on your needs, then you will want a main linux partition, a linux swap, and I usually make the rest fat32. Windows is tricky about letting you set it as fat32, if its larger then a certain size it won't let you choose fat32, it will force you to NTFS, even though it will still in fact read the large FAT32 partition.

Here what my partition table looks like on this laptop which runs Gentoo primarily, but can boot into windows if need be.

tavilach · n00b Joined: 11 Jun 2005 Posts: 5

Do I need to make the Linux partitions now, or can I just leave 20 GB of free space?

As for using NTFS, I want to be able to share documents and files between the two partitions, so I'm assuming I need a shared FAT32 partition.
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"Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it, and I shall move the world." -Archimedes

zonk · Apprentice Joined: 23 May 2005 Posts: 176

FAT32 will be better for giving linux write access to the partition.

leave the space free for now, in case you change your mind about your linux partitions later. it really doesn't matter at this point.