LVM2 on a partition

[allucid]

Does LVM need the entire physical disk? I have a laptop with WinXP (ugh) installed on a small partition and would like to use LVM on the rest of the disk for Linux.

[voytas]

you can create LVM partition of any size, so the answear to your question is YES
_________________
LAPTOP: ThinkPad T530

[schlady]

So the aswer to your question should be NO
No, LVM does not need the entire physical disk!

I'm running WinXP on a small partition and gentoo with lvm on the rest of the disk, so like you want it to - this works.
Follow the LVM Guide http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/lvm2.xml, but let hda1 be your WinXP Partition, hda2 your /boot, hda3 swap, hda4 /, hda5 LVM....

[voytas]