*BSD News Article 94012


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From: jimd@slip106.termserv.siu.edu (Jim Dutton)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc
Subject: Re: New user needs some help
Date: Sun, 20 Apr 1997 20:50:13 CST
Organization: Southern Illinois University
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	     (from pussyface@pussy.com (pussygalore))
	     (at Sun, 20 Apr 1997 18:00:00 GMT)
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Hi Kevin, on Apr 20 you wrote:

> 1)  Get a new hhd, and have a partion of about 500mb for W95 and the
> rest for Freebsd.
> 
> 2)  Partion the old hdd with something like partion magic and have
> about half the hdd space for each o/s.
> 
> 3) Get the new hdd and have it as a second one, re-install W95 and
> have Freebsd on the second drive.

Obviously, there are pros and cons to having multiple OS's with their own
hard drives, and multiple OS's sharing a single hard drive. Ultimately,
you are the only one who can make that decision: 

	- what do you want to do with each OS? 
	- how much disk space do you know that you will need for the applications
	  and data files that you already, or really expect to, have?
	- do you plan to do any program development, or OS modifications (which
	  require OS source files) ?
	- and so on

With only a single 500MB HD, you CAN set up W95 and FBSD, but you won't have
much room, and you probably won't be able to compile a new kernel (to remove
unneeded drivers, et cetera) or load and compile X-Windows. The FreeBSD Web
page on installation has a rough estimate for disk space related to several
different OS/application setups. Make SURE you read this (www.freebsd.org).

Then there are issues of ease of use, ease of management, ease of change,
ease of growth. Personally, if I had two drives of "sufficient" size (say,
at LEAST 500MB for each OS), then I would set up one drive for each OS.

This simplifies just about everything, and also helps to insure that using
one OS doesn't do something unnice to the disk space that the other OS uses.
So, IF you can, _I_ would recommend your option #3.

Others will have different opinions, as there are MANY pros and cons.