Quick Install Question

[Doug Hawkins]

Gerard Seibert wrote:

>On 10/11/2005 5:29:42 PM, Gerard Replied:
>
>Actually, there are three computers. One is running FreeBSD 5.4 and the
>other two have WinXP Pro installed. I networked all three together. The
>WinXP systems are using the NTFS format. Samba can read and write to
>both of the WinXP machines without any problems.
>
>I really do not know if this is germane to a dual boot system however.
>It probably is not since WinXP would not actually be running when
>FreeBSD was in this type of configuration.
>
>Fat32 is really a poor file system when compared to NTFS. It is too bad
>that he is unable to get a second machine and use FreeBSD on it instead
>of dual booting.
>

Unfortunately, NTFS is not documented by Microsoft so non-Microsoft 
drivers cannot write to that file system reliably.  See 
http://www.linux-ntfs.org/ -- they've put a lot of work into discovering 
how to use NTFS.  So 'out-of-the-box', FreeBSD OS can mount and read 
from NTFS partitions, but not write.  Samba allows computers to exchange 
files, but uses each computer's local OS to access a filesystem.

There are GUI tools that use the linux-ntfs utility 'ntfsresize' to 
resize an NTFS partition, so you can add a FreeBSD partition even if you 
have a pre-built NTFS install.  I keep a copy of 'SystemRescueCD' around 
for just that purpose, since it has those tools already.  Some of the 
WinXP "recovery' disks will wipe out your entire drive when you 
'recover', so as most people will recommend, install Windows first(!) 
because it's install utilities are very presumptuous and you can easily 
waste all your previous effort on a different OS.

I have read that there is a way to use the WinXP NTFS driver from within 
Linux (and probably FreeBSD) to provide NTFS write support, but I have 
not tried that yet.

In any case,  Welcome Daniel!  Good luck with your install.  If you are 
installing on a machine whose BIOS is a few years old, you may find the 
1024-cylinder limitation: the BIOS will not boot from a partition whose 
start is beyond that limit.  If it's a new machine, then you probably 
don't need to worry about it.  If you do, create a small NTFS partition 
for WinXP, then the FreeBSD partition, then a larger NTFS partition if 
you need it (it will appear as drive 'd:').  I always keep a reasonably 
sized FAT32 partition so I can transfer files between the two OS's 
(that's the only 'common' read/write FS).