Author: Aaron Turner
Email: aturner@pobox.com
Web Page: http://www.pobox.com/~aturner/
Date Submitted: Thu, May 21, 1998
Status: New Entry

Requester: irshad khan
Email: ikhan@tiac.net
Request Made: Sun, Apr 26, 1998

Releases: all
Platform: intel
Category:  Installing Issues
Category Listing:  How do I make room for Linux with Windows 95 installed?

Issue

I have three hard drives attached to a 486 processor. At present the 
primary master drive and slave drive have everything working on 
my system which is windows 95. The secondary master drive is blank 
at present. Now I can not install Linux Redhat on the blank drive 
on account of the expressly stated limitations on the hard drive 
for installation of the commercial package. It has to go on the 
primary master drive (or at least so does the manual for 
installation say). My question is this. Could I shift everything 
from the currently used drives to the blank drive (by simply 
issuing the commands copy C:\*.* F:\*.* copy D:\*.* F:\*.*) and using the blanked 
drives C: D: for installation of Linux. Would windows 95 be happy 
with the new arrangement? Kindly help as I am getting very 
frustrated with not being able to do certain things which Linux 
could help me do. 

Response

First you need to realize that the C: drive of Windows95 must 
always be on your boot disk. Windows95 will not function if you 
move it's data to a different drive. Linux also likes to have it's 
root partition (aka "/") installed on the first disk, though this isn't 
necessary. In the references section, I've placed two URL's to two 
different Linux How-To's that go over popular work-arounds to this 
common problem. Either method should work nicely. There is also a 
program called "fips" which you can download from the web (do a 
search on Yahoo! or Infoseek for locations) or find on your RedHat 
CDROM disk. This program allows you to resize FAT partitions to 
make room for Linux. As far as I know, it should *not* be used on 
FAT32 partitions with Win95/OSR2. DO NOT USE THE COPY COMMAND TO MOVE 
YOUR Win95 FILESYSTEMS! YOU WILL CREATE A HUGE MESS. 

References

http://www.linux-howto.com/LDP/HOWTO/mini/LILO.html
http://www.linux-howto.com/LDP/HOWTO/mini/Loadlin+Win95.html