Noob Partioning Question/Recomendation

[kwisher]

Hello All,

I have scoured this forum on this topic and I'm still confused. I want to set up a dual boot with Win-XP. I used xp's partitioning tool when I installed it. I divided up the disk as shown below:

/dev/sda 465gb sata drive

/dev/sda1 ntfs 14.65gb (winxp c:drive)
dev/sda2 extended 451gb
dev/sda5 unknown 19.53gb (this is where I want Mint)
/dev/sda6 ntfs 14.65gb (shared data drive for win & mint)
/de/sda7 ntfs 19.53gb (this is where I will install WINxp applications)
/dev/sda8 ntfs 397gb (this will be shared with XP & Mint mostly for video capture & editing)

When I use GParted, how do I setup the partition where I want Mint installed?

TIA

[Husse]

Something like you have
Use manual partitioning (you have to to keep your partitioning) and use ext3 for sda5
sda6 confuses me

shared data drive for win & mint

What do you mean by data?
If you mean installed programs, forget ntfs - you must have a Linux filesystem (ext3) but that's what you use sda5 for. If you mean something like your mp3files it's OK, but I'd recommend making sda5 smaller, say 10 GB and add the freed bytes to sda6 and format it as ext3. Then use a windows ext2 driver to access it from Windows. Note that ext2 and ext3 are the same, with the good exception that ext3 is journaling. Linux journaling does not work under Windows anyway, neither does the journaling in NTFS work under Linux
Google for

Code: Select all

windows ext3 driver

to find ext2/3 drivers