Ok I'm about to install RedHat 6 onto my system for a dual boot setup and want to make sure I don't lose nething during the process, so please bare with me.
I have a 3Gb hdd which I think is hda and only 1 partition (hda1).
I have a 28Gb hdd that seems to register as hdb1 for the 2Gb partition (i want linux on this partition) and 26Gb of games and download on hdb5 (why does it do hdb5? theres no 2,3,4 it just skips straight to 5??) which I don't want to lose and can't backup.
I tested and mounted these devices in VMWare under Win2k. They seemed to work fine and just as I expected (except that my 28Gb partition 2 was on /dev/hdb5).
Last time I tried to install linux (RedHat 5.2) onto the 2Gb, Windows could no longer see the 2Gb (thats fine) but couldn't see the 26Gb! I panicked and I have no idea how I got back the 26Gb (maybe fdisk or something to restore partition tables - had Win98 back then).
But I would like to know how I can set up my harddrives to allow me to install RedHat 6 onto my 2Gb partition on my 28Gb drive, and still have Windows see the 26Gb partition without data loss.
And what would my options be for booting? Have lilo modify my Windows disk (hda) boot partition and it can still boot Windows or RedHat as I choose? (I want to default to Windows too).
Any help/suggestions apprieciated. Thanks