Windows or Linux?

Christoph Heermann · Post by **Christoph Heermann** » 2 Sep 2009 1:02 pm

Chip, usually Windows names the main partition/drive "C:" and installs the main repository (Windows) there - except you tell the installer to do different. So either you did the latter or you created a "copy" of those folders on your "F:" drive. That part I did not really understand from your post. But either way. If you begin thinking to install Linux, always use an internal disk, which will not be detached from the machine (this requires re-partitioning one of those partitions/drives). Installing Linux on one of your external drives might not a good idea, as it might happen that the bootloader gets confused once that device is not plugged into that slot where it's expected to be.
As you can see, there will be quite some details to learn/think about when starting that little project. But if your at least a little interested, it's worth every minute as it will add real value to your present knowledge about our little digital friends.

To use that steel-analogy once again: Most important: Never give up and have patience. And if you once run out of good mood - listen to some good steel

Good luck for now and feel free to ask questions - as I see there are quite some Linux fans around - funny to meet you quys here, would have expected a lot more Apple enthusiasm on this topic...

- Christoph

John Swindle · Post by **John Swindle** » 2 Sep 2009 1:06 pm

Chip:
If those Windows files on your F: drive are things you need, copy them over to another space for safekeeping. In any case, don't worry about removing them before installing Linux. (did I understand your dilemma correctly?)

The Linux installation program will format the space you choose, erasing everything in the selected drive or partition, so the presence of Windows files won't matter.

Most Linux distributions will give you a choice of file systems to install when it's time to reformat the drive. I recommend "ext3". Of the choices you'll be given, it is the most compatible with both windows and the booting loader called "GRUB". Ext4 might seem to be a better choice, but it is incompatible with the most widely used version of GRUB.

I suggest you do a little research with Google, and learn as much as you can about Grub. It is really not very difficult to learn everything you'll need, but going in blindly could be a big mistake.

This is starting to sound like a lot to learn. Keep in mind though, that things start falling into place, and this stuff gets easier. And for me, anyway, it has been well worth the effort.

Have fun

John

Chip Fossa · Post by **Chip Fossa** » 2 Sep 2009 1:35 pm

John,

Thank you for your post and advice. Well taken. And also, thanks again, Christoph. I feel, at least, I'm in good hands here.

I'm sorry for not being more clear on this F drive WINDOWS/Program Files.

They both are definitely COPIES; well, I think, anyway. Yeah, I simply said copy to this location (F). I'm saying that deleting them from F drive is not going to screw up anything (I think, I hope). Anyway, I've got C drive completely backed up with Acronis on K drive.
The reason I use K drive exclusively for Acronis is that I don't "get" the 'incremental' and/or 'differential' backing up after the initial full backup. Too confusing for me. I find it easier to simply backup the entire C drive, and then delete the previous one. But you need twice the C drive space on the destination drive to do this.

I wish, anyway, if I could find out why I'm not being allowed to get rid of WINs/PFs on F drive.

Christoph Heermann · Post by **Christoph Heermann** » 2 Sep 2009 1:59 pm

OK, let's assume you have a working C: drive containing all the necessary folders "Windows", "Program Files", etc. to run the Windows OS and if it's true that F: is just a copy (and else entirely empty), John is perfectly right: Nothing bad should come out of simply using the F: drive for your Linux installation.

As you were speaking of "external" drives I assume it's possible to unplug them, e.g. USB devices? If yes, do that before starting the Linux installation. The other thing is to create a backup of any valuable data (that only refers to YOUR data like documents, music, pictures, etc. and NOT the opreating system and the programs), which might hurt losing.

That's just being extra-cautious in case something goes terribly wrong during the installation and you end up formatting a wrong partition or drive. And believe me, that has happened to others than newbies as well...

One last thing: Using the linux tools to set up the partitions will not in all cases show you the drive lables you're used to (like "C:" and "F"). Don't get nervous then, try to identify what's your current F: by its size (with ~230 GB it should be easy to identify amongst the other drives in your system, once the external drives are unplugged). Be sure that only that drive will be used, partitioned and formatted during the process. Partitions subject to be formatted by the tool will bear something like a little "f" somewhere in the overview. As long as no other drive/partition is marked that way you (and your old system) will be fine.

Signing off now, it's late over here in Europe and I'll have to catch an early flight. Good night.

- Christoph

Chip Fossa · Post by **Chip Fossa** » 2 Sep 2009 3:31 pm

Thanks Christoph...

Well, what you just told me...

I'm gonna have to disassemble this info.

I'm cornfused now.

But this is OK. This is nothing new. I'm simply responding to a first run-through of your post. Have a good and safe flight.

As mentioned before, I'm not going to make any rash moves, until I'm at least 1/2 confident that I can pull this off.

Chip Fossa · Post by **Chip Fossa** » 2 Sep 2009 3:38 pm

Christoph,

Sorry, pally.

Yes - the external drives are USB.

BUT - Why would it be necessary to UNPLUG them, if I was to install Linux on the internal F drive?

I gotztoo know this. Otherwize, how can I grow; or grow up?

Steve Norman · Post by **Steve Norman** » 2 Sep 2009 3:49 pm

Is F a partition or separate drive altogether? either way, I would back everything up to an external hd before doing anything. As far as I know, you should be able to create a 3rd partition if f is #2 (with c being #1) and install linux onto partition 3. If you download ubuntu or knoppix etc and burn a cd you can set your bios to boot from the cd (it probably already is set to that) and test run linux as mentioned before. while booted into your linux cd you can have it look at your disks and tell you how much room you have.

If everything looks good, you can install. During the install you will be asked what to do with your partitions. you should see both C and f, but they will not be called that. they will be something like hda0 or sda0 and hda1 or sda1 (if your hard drive is sata, its sda, older hds are hda)

sda indicates the first sata hard drive. sda0 means hard drive one partition 1. sda1 = hard drive 1 partition 2.

whichever partition has the most unused space can be used for the linux partition by simply using the slider on the partition graphic.

this tutorial shows you what an ubuntu install looks like:

http://www.howtoforge.org/the-perfect-d ... buntu-9.04

that doesnt show all the partition options, but one would be something to the effect of "resize existing partitions"

which is what you would do.

Christoph Heermann · Post by **Christoph Heermann** » 2 Sep 2009 3:55 pm

Sorry if I was not precise enough on that one: The idea behind that is simlpy to avoid any constellation where you end up having un-wanted partitions being target of the partition process.
Obviously the USB devices are not needed to set up the system. So leave them unplugged as long as you install, so nothing bad will happen to them (like being formatted by accident). I know that it might sound a little paranoid, but you that law of Murphy's right?
Once the system is up and running you can use them as you're used to.

- Christoph

Mitch Drumm · Post by **Mitch Drumm** » 2 Sep 2009 4:17 pm

Chip:

I haven't played with Linux in 15 years, but here is some advice:

Do you have 2 separate internal hard drives--I mean 2 different physical pieces of hardware? I am not talking about partitions.

I would play with Linux with the CD as previous posters in this thread mentioned.

If you in fact have 2 separate hard drives and want to actually install Linux on a hard drive, I would open the case up and disconnect the power plug from the drive that has your Windows installation.

For that matter, I would disconnect any external drives also.

That way, your other drives are inert and you can't accidentally foul up and get confused as to which partition is which and end up re-formatting your Windows installation, which would be a disaster.

Needless to say, make a fresh backup of your data before proceeding in any case.

If you don't have 2 separate internal hard drives and your current F drive is in fact on the same piece of hardware as C, you can still proceed with a Linux install, but you have to be ABSOLUTELY certain you can recognize which partition is which when you are looking at the Linux installation interface.

The typical way to identify partitions in such a caae is by size--if F is 230 gigabytes and that is where you want to put Linux, then you would want make sure that you are choosing a 230 gigabyte partition when you reformat. Everything currently on F will be gone.

It might be that Linux will ask you to delete the F partition rather than reformat it--I don't know. If you delete it, then you would have to make a new partition and format that new partition only. I don't know what drive letter you would then have for the 230 gigabyte partition.

Assuming you have only 1 internal hard drive, then I further assume it has 2 partitions: C and F? I am guessing you have all your personal data on C, rather than F? And that your backups are entirely to external drives?

If that is the case, then you certainly don't need any Windows files on F. The Windows installation on C currently controls F as well as C. I am guessing you at some point copied a bunch of Windows files from C to F for some reason.

If you install Linux on the current F, then Windows will no longer be in charge of F. You will see a boot menu when you start up and you will choose the Windows partition or the Linux partition.

Chip Fossa · Post by **Chip Fossa** » 2 Sep 2009 5:59 pm

GOD!

You guys are brilliant.

BUT - PARTIONING - I don't get it; and I'm aware that it's a BIG deal.

Mitch - without physically going into the PC, I'm pretty sure that I installed a Seagate HDD, around 230GB.

Up till now, I haven't put anything, well, to speak of, on this Seagate. I'm sure it's Drive F.

I wish I knew how to send PICS to the Forum. But I don't.Right now, the terminology has me bugged-up.

But it ain't you guys. You guys know a whole bunch; And you hafta to talk in the terms that you do; for the greater PC community.

It's my problem. I don't comprehend "advanced" PC stuff now. At least not right off.

I'm gonna bale out on this. It's beyond me. And, I can see that a lot of attention may be needed.

You guys scared me off. And I thank-you for that.

{the terminology, as expressed in previous posts, is something to deal with}.

...another time, another place...

Once again... THANKS ALL

Chipper $:\$

Jeff Hyman · Post by **Jeff Hyman** » 2 Sep 2009 6:14 pm

Chip,

I can see where you got scared off. There is some excellent info in this thread, but it is a little over whelming for someone in your shoes with little to no Linux experience. Here's a recommendation:

1. Find a local Linux Users Group, or a local Computer store that has someone that has been-there done-that.

2. Pay them to do the job while you watch and learn. In a Users Group, there will probably be many that will do it at no charge... maybe even make it the focus of one of their meetings.

3. Don't get scared off. Do it. Remember the first time you played PSG? You were probably a little intimidated and frustrated... but after awhile you were glad you did. Same with Linux. The knowledge you will gain is worth its weight in gold.

Mitch Drumm · Post by **Mitch Drumm** » 2 Sep 2009 6:23 pm

Chip:

Think of your entire hard drive as a container--like an empty carton of cigarettes.

Think of the partitions as the individual packs of cigarettes inside the carton.

The carton might contain 0 or up to 10 packs. Likewise a hard drive can have 0 or more (not limited to 10) partitions.

C, D, E, etcetera are partitions, not drives. Even if you only had 1 partition on the drive, it would still technically be a partition although you could speak of it as a drive.

If you go downtown and buy a new hard drive, it will have NO partitions---it's an empty carton.

You have to put at least 1 partition on a hard drive to do anything. Without a partition, it is useless. The cigarette analogy would be that you could have one huge pack (partition) of 200 cigarettes in the carton, or any number of smaller packs (partitions).

Presumably, you have a single Seagate hard drive, with 2 partitions, C and F. You could just as easily have 5 or 10 partitions, like putting packs of cigarettes into the carton.

Each partition could then contain data or operating systems--think of that stuff as the cigarettes within the individual packs inside the carton.

You could have a 300 gig hard drive with one 50 gig partition and the remainder just unallocated space (not a partition). Or you could have a 50 gig partition and another 250 gig partition. Or it could be split 5 ways, whatever. "Unallocated space" is by definition not part of a partition.

With some limitations, you can expand a Windows partition into unallocated space.

Mitch Drumm · Post by **Mitch Drumm** » 2 Sep 2009 6:57 pm

Chip:

Look at this picture;

That shows my hard drives and the individual partitions. You can look at your partitions just as easily.

C and D are 2 partitions on a 320 gig Seagate hard drive, called Disk 1 here.

E is a single partition taking up all the space on a Western Digital 640 gig hard drive, called Disc 0 here.

You can see that all are formatted with the NTFS file system and all are healthy. C is correctly shown as the boot partition.

I have no unallocated space.

You can see my DVD drive there also.

I've got C, D, E, and F.

To see the setup on your PC, go to control panel/administrative tools and then poke computer management in the right pane. Then poke disk management under "storage" on the left hand side. It may take a minute to load.

If you see disc 0 and disc 1, it means you have 2 separate hard drives.

Are C and F part of different drives in your case?

Chip Fossa · Post by **Chip Fossa** » 2 Sep 2009 9:18 pm

Thanks Mitch,

Boy, I'm lost.

Thanks again.

PLEASE now ... As we progress here, it's just not for me. At this point.

I said OK before, but now, I'm just not sure.

Steve Norman · Post by **Steve Norman** » 2 Sep 2009 9:44 pm

its not for everyone, but if you end up with an old computer that is slow and buggy, dont throw it out! load up a linux flavor and learn on that. One of linux's best features is the reviving of old computers.

Personally I think you WILL learn all of what you need to by attempting to use linux, but there are some fundamentals that will cause massive headaches. Partitioning hard drives (assigning divisions) is one of the scariest. But like Christoph said, its like learning the steel, hard confusing, frustrating but the payoff is great.

word on the street is that windows 7 is a very good improvement in the line. time will tell. if you fear linux that may be the road to travel.

Just remember that you can download an ubuntu version to your desktop and burn it to a cd, you can put the cd in the computer and restart it to play around without affecting your computer in any way, so you cant really mess anything up unless you really try to.

pushy aint we?

David Spicer · Post by **David Spicer** » 2 Sep 2009 9:49 pm

Have you considered an Apple? Sure they cost more but they are very well thought out and easy to learn and use. They also support most third party Audio Interface boxes and so on, including Fire Wire which is _much_ better than USB for Audio stuff. Many Linux programs have been ported to Mac and are still free. Mac OS is based on BSD Unix, so it's not unlike Linux at the OS level.

If you can't afford Apple then I agree with other people on this forum. Use Ubuntu. Windows is no longer a viable option for home use. It's hard to say what's worse, the viruses and malware or Microsoft's intrusive and inadequate attempts to stop them. Besides that newer version need high end hardware to work at all. (high end meaning expensive)

Most pros I know use apples for recording and so on.

John Swindle · Post by **John Swindle** » 2 Sep 2009 10:09 pm

You're getting good stuff, here, Chip. Jeff Hyman's suggestion about finding a Users Group is excellent advice. Likewise, Mitch Drumm's explanation of partitions is exactly right.

If you decide to wait awhile and let all this sink in, you'll be able to explore the possibilities and learn without any time pressures.

If you're not having fun, you might be trying too hard.

Christoph Heermann · Post by **Christoph Heermann** » 3 Sep 2009 4:31 am

Maybe we should take a minute and think about the odd chord sequence, Mitch found in his "Computer Management":

I've got C, D, E, and F

Seems our little digital friends attempt to participate in our passion after all? What does that tell us - they want to be part of it?
Sorry, couldn't resist that one

Chip, take you're time and once thing you've learned already, you're never alone in the Linux family and welcome at any time.

- Christoph

Chip Fossa · Post by **Chip Fossa** » 3 Sep 2009 5:10 am

Thanks all,

I'm just now getting back to the PC.

There is much more here to digest, and I appreciate it all.

NOW!! I feel I gotta do this. You dudes won't let me go away.

OK - love you guys. Right now I gotta go make a living, but I am NOW in the re-considering mode.

I am not chicken. I ARE A ROOSTAH! I be back.

Steve Norman · Post by **Steve Norman** » 3 Sep 2009 4:36 pm

related to topic

http://blog.audiojungle.net/resources/w ... ng-studio/

Chip Fossa · Post by **Chip Fossa** » 4 Sep 2009 3:20 am

Once again, thanks all, for your words of encouragement and caution.

I think I will download UBUNTU and burn it to a CD and have a look-see; as long as I can back on the Forum if things do go south - at least I can get help.

I'm just gonna take it a step at a time.

Mitch, I checked out Computer Management and I have Disk 0 and Disk 1 listed. Disk 0 has ACER (C) 144.30 GB NTFS; DATA (D)144.03 GB NTFS; it also lists 9.76 GB Healthy (EISA Configuration); (C) is listed as Healthy (System, Boot etc.) and (D) is listed as Healthy (Primary Partition).
Disk 1 has (F) 232.88 GB NTFS Healthy (Active, Primary Partition).

So, as far as internal drives go, I guess I have C, D, F. E is the DVD drive. L and K are the Mybook external drives.

All drives listed are Healthy.

Michael Maddex · Post by **Michael Maddex** » 4 Sep 2009 7:45 am

Chip Fossa wrote:... I think I will download UBUNTU and burn it to a CD and have a look-see ...

Chip, I have a couple of small suggestions to help get you started with Ubuntu. Go to the Ubuntu Guide website ( http://ubuntuguide.org/wiki/Ubuntu:Jaunty ) where you can read up on the installation and use of Ubuntu. After a lengthy Table of Contents, the info begins.

The Installation section will direct you to a site to download a Desktop PC disk image. Get the image labeled PC (Intel x86) desktop CD and burn it to disk. If you are not sure about burning an image, the guide has a link to info for that.

You can run the Ubuntu system from the CD to check it out or use it to install the system. The guide explains this as well as how to set up a dual-boot with MS so that you will have both systems on your PC. If you do that, there will be a boot-time menu to choose which Operating System you want when you turn on your PC.

In short, this guide will give you step-by-step instructions on how to get started with Ubuntu.

I taught Linux/Unix material at the local community college for about ten years and based on my experience there I would say that anyone with a good Internet connection who can read and follow directions can have an enjoyable and successful experience with Ubuntu.

Just my $0.02 - HTH.

Chip Fossa · Post by **Chip Fossa** » 4 Sep 2009 8:19 am

Thanks Michael for the good piece of advice. I'm getting ready to do this.

I just got done reading Steve's AudioJungle link, and it is also very informative. I'm already starting to see why Linux is gaining in popularity.

This site mention Ubuntu Studio - is this THE Ubuntu?

I haven't checked anything out as yet.

Also, Cristoph, there are 2 separate physical internal drives. I guess C & D on the OES, and a Seagate drive (F) that I installed awhile ago. Just for the record.

Great advice everyone. Much thanks.

Mitch Drumm · Post by **Mitch Drumm** » 4 Sep 2009 11:10 am

Chip:

Good that you took a look at disk management. You have to have a basic understanding of that stuff before you begin fiddling with partitioning and new operating systems.

Keep in mind the distinction between drives and partitions.

It looks like your PC has a 320 gig internal drive with 3 partitions (C, D, and the EISA thing) and a 250 gig internal drive with a single partition (F).

Those drive letters may change when you are in the middle of the Linux installation, so I would outright disconnect the 320 gig drive and external drives before I started---that way the only place you can install Linux is on the current F, which is where I assume you want it.

If you go ahead with a Windows 7 fresh installation in October, it would go on the current C partition on the 320 gig drive, replacing Vista.

Chip Fossa · Post by **Chip Fossa** » 4 Sep 2009 12:49 pm

Mitch,

Without physically going into the PC, is there another way to disconnect/disable drives C & D (and that other one)?

Wouldn't C&D be on the motherboard, anyway? I don't recall seeing another physical HDD when I installed the Seagate. Just the Seagate and the DVD/CD drives seemed to be all there was (I think).

I'm not quite yet ready to make an install right now.

I may want to choose another distribution, once and if I get the hang of Linux.

I've got a Lambda Lexicon audio interface with Steinberg Cubase software. Would this work with Linux?