partitioning my windows drive

[darkscot]

I'm fairly new to this, but I have installed linux on an extra HDD before. this time I want to use my main drive which already has windows xp installed on it. how can I partition some space on my windows drive without messing up my windows installation, so that I can install sabayon on there, too? If I use Gparted, will that allow me to do such a thing without messing up my windows intsall?

What I do on a 'standard' PC i.e. one with Windows already installed, with only one hard drive and only one partition, is this:

1. Leave the existing partion (C:\) alone.
2.* Create a new partition and format it as FAT32 (Windows will automatically name this as D:\)
3. Create a new partition (at least 12GB for Sabayon) but DO NOT format it.
4. Install Sabayon and during the install select the option "use existing free space on drive".
5. Have a beer!

All the above (except No.5) can be done with Gparted using the live CD.

*The reason for item 2 is that this partition can be shared (read AND write) between Windows and Linux.

Many people create all sorts of extra partitions for /home /bin etc but personally I have never found any real benefit in doing that. My philosophy is to keep the number of partiions as few as possible.

[slampy]

awesome, thank you! I just need to build up the courage to try this out now. I'm terrified it will screw up my xp install, lol. I can't count the amount of times I've needed to reformat my drive. (not always because of linux though)

[darkscot]

awesome, thank you! I just need to build up the courage to try this out now. I'm terrified it will screw up my xp install, lol. I can't count the amount of times I've needed to reformat my drive. (not always because of linux though)

Have you REALLY needed to reformat your drive? In my experience the Windows XP disk does a pretty good job of repairing screwed up XP installations. You just need to boot up from your XP disk and choose install option, then further into the install it gives you the option of "repairing an existing Windows installation".
IMHO you should always have two partitions on Windows XP. One (C:\) for XP and programmes and one (D:\) for all your data. You can repoint your 'My Documents ' folder to D:\ and that way if you do need to reinstall XP it will just overwrite C:\ and all your data will be untouched.
I have only ever once (and I mess about with my PC a LOT!) had to reformat my hard drive and even then I later discovered I didn't need to do it.

[slampy]

actually yes. I'm quite computer savey, well with windows at least, lol. anyway, it has happened a couple times with linux. the first time I messed up my MBR I just used the xp disc and did a simple "fix mbr" command and that worked beautifully. the second time I thought the same thing happend so again I put in my disc and did the same thing, but it never fixed it. at boot it would just hang there when grub tries to load. that is when I had to reformat. and yes, rather than partitions I just use a second HDD for all my data files. I never save files on my windows drive, lol. I'd be so pissed if I kept losing them haha.