2 Hard drives on laptop are displayed as one big drive in installation...

[Silhorn]

Hi,

I am trying to install enlightenment pclinuxOS on my laptop which has 2 hard drives.
On the desktop of the live CD it displays the 2 hard drives correctly, one being 14.5gb and the other 19.5gb

I now want to install this on the hard drive on the 19.5gb but the installation wizard lists the laptop as having one big 33GB hard drive.
If i go into custom partition option i see that there are 2 partitions, 19.5gb, and 14.5gb.

So should I just follow the installation manual that comes along with the liveCD to choose custom partition and create a swap file 2x my RAM size and 2 more partitions of /home and / with the 19.5gb partition it is showing?

[T6]

your laptop has two drives whit those sizes?

are you referring to drives as partitions?

it is not the same and you are not being specific enough

also you are not saying which one can be used for linux, you are kinda limited in space, more info on hardware is important here

[Old-Polack]

Hi,

I am trying to install enlightenment pclinuxOS on my laptop which has 2 hard drives.
On the desktop of the live CD it displays the 2 hard drives correctly, one being 14.5gb and the other 19.5gb

I now want to install this on the hard drive on the 19.5gb but the installation wizard lists the laptop as having one big 33GB hard drive.
If i go into custom partition option i see that there are 2 partitions, 19.5gb, and 14.5gb.

So should I just follow the installation manual that comes along with the liveCD to choose custom partition and create a swap file 2x my RAM size and 2 more partitions of /home and / with the 19.5gb partition it is showing?

It would be easier to understand what your hardware actually is if you would open a terminal on the liveCD as the normal user and issue these commands;

[guest@localhost ~]$ su                        <Enter>
Password:                            <-- Enter root and press the Enter key
[root@localhost guest]# fdisk -l         <Enter>  <-- That's a lower case L

Post your results, including the prompt, command, and result output.

[Silhorn]

Sorry,

Heres the output.


Disk /dev/sda: 36.5 GB, 36487816192 bytes
240 heads, 63 sectors/track, 4713 cylinders, total 71265266 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0xcccdcccd

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1   *          63    30315599    15157768+   7  HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda2        30315600    71260559    20472480    f  W95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/sda5        30315663    71260559    20472448+   b  W95 FAT32

Disk /dev/sdb: 4009 MB, 4009754624 bytes
84 heads, 22 sectors/track, 4237 cylinders, total 7831552 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0xfc491886

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sdb1   *          62     7831551     3915745    b  W95 FAT32


So i what i meant was I have 2 hard drives, one 15gb and one 20gb.
The 15gb currently has windows xp installed
The 20gb is empty.

I want to install pclinuxos on 20gb hard drive and dual boot it with xp.

When i get into the installation wizard, it displays my laptop as having only 1 hard drive of 33gb in size.
If i choose option one, it says it will erase all 33gb

If i go into custom partition option, i find out it displays the hard drives on the laptop as partitions 1 and 2, not as hard drives which i find strange.

[Aradalf]

Because you don't have 2 hard drives. You have a 36.5GB drive and a 4GB drive(a flash drive? ) The 36.5GB drive has 2 partitions, a 15GB and a 20GB. The 15GB is formatted NTFS, and has Windows XP. The 20GB is formatted FAT32, and is empty. Delete that partition using the PCLOS Control Center on the LiveCD. Then, upon entering the installer, choose "Use remaining free space on Drive" or something like that. The installer will automatically create your partitions. But those partitions would probably not be very useful, considering your limited drive space, so you should preferably go into Custom Partition and create your partitions. If you have less than 2 GB of RAM, then create a "swap" of double your RAM. If you have 2GB or more of RAM, then create a "swap" a bit larger than your RAM. After that, use the remaining space for a "/" partition.

[Silhorn]

Ohhhh

After you said that I just had 1 drive, i checked on computer management in XP and you were right!

The laptop originally wasn't mine so I just saw it had a C drive and D drive and automatically thought it had 2 hard drives...

Ok so now what I do is,

Erase 20gb partition using control center.
In installer, choose custom partitioning
Create swap partition of 512mb (256 RAM).
Remaining space all goes to a "/" partition?

Or all remaining space goes to 50% a "/" partition and 50% a "/home" partition? (That's what it says in the installer guide...?)

[Aradalf]

Or all remaining space goes to 50% a "/" partition and 50% a "/home" partition? (That's what it says in the installer guide...?)

Basically, a separate /home partition is useful if you want to be able to reinstall and not lose your settings/data. The separate partition is mounted at /home/. If a separate partition is not created, all your data will be on the main partition. With only 19.5GB given to PCLOS, you would be better off using all of that space for a "/" partition. 2 partitions is a waste of space if only 20GB is allocated to both combined.

[Silhorn]

I understand now and I will try that

Thanks everyone for your help