Thoughts of Triple Boot

[MotF Bane]

So, I've been thinking of setting up a pair of 250GB hard drives into RAID 0, and then I want to run Windows XP, Windows Vista, and some variant on Linux. Just have a few questions and issues.

First: I have XP now, and even after defragmenting, there are still three clumps of files. How can I force them to unify into one bigger clump?

Second: Would I be able to reformat XP/Vista sections without harming the other Windows or Linux installation, as XP (and presumably Vista as well) seem to have a nasty habit of becoming screwed up, or would a reformat involve wiping all three operating systems?

Thanks.

[Serra]

1. Strictly speaking, you can't. XP likes to preserve space between some files for some good (and some bad) reasons... there's really nothing you can do about it. You can try getting some aftermarket defragment tools (I support Diskeeper myself) that can do a little better, but you won't really eliminate it.

2. Yes you can. Each installation will be in its own partition, and you can format partitions individually. The issue you may come up against here is that your boot statements may no longer point at the correct place, so proceed with caution.

Last bit of advice: install Linux last. Windows doesn't generally like detecting Linux flavors, but Linux will always detect Windows, and hence it works best to give it the boot loader (done most easily by installing it last).

[MotF Bane]

2. Yes you can. Each installation will be in its own partition, and you can format partitions individually. The issue you may come up against here is that your boot statements may no longer point at the correct place, so proceed with caution.

Last bit of advice: install Linux last. Windows doesn't generally like detecting Linux flavors, but Linux will always detect Windows, and hence it works best to give it the boot loader (done most easily by installing it last).

I forgot to mention that I tried recently (using PartitionMagic 8) to partition my 80GB hard drive into a 50 section (for XP), a 25 (for Linux), and a 1 (swap file). XP refused to format onto the 50 section, and demanded that I give it the entire drive. So how can I format a partition individually if XP demands the entire drive?