Formating an NTFS bootable partition

[jec at jackpinetech.com (John Casebolt)]

All -

QtParted (http://qtparted.sourceforge.net) is a great Qt-based, open 
source Partition Magic clone which may be used for messing with the 
partition table on your machine.  I would (after editing your boot.ini 
as below) run QtParted to delete the "D:" partition on your drive, and 
then recreate it as an empty FAT32 or even a Linux partition.

Check out http://www.sysresccd.org/ for a very cool System Rescue CD 
which has QtParted (and a ton of other very useful utils) as part of a 
Linux LiveCD.

Whatever distribution of Linux you are using will take you from your 
empty partition to Linux filesystem(s) (ext2, ext3, reiser, etc.) 
during installation.

A more important choice will be whether you want the Windows or Linux 
(GRUB) bootloader to be the primary boot manager; see 
http://www.geocities.com/epark/linux/grub-w2k-HOWTO.html and similar 
HOWTOs for the low-down.  I do it both ways.

If you choose the Windows bootloader to be the king, you will install 
GRUB on the second partition of your drive (or wherever you place 
/boot), and you will then add an entry back to boot.ini (called Linux 
or something) which will take you to the GRUB menu when chosen at boot 
time.

If you replace the WIndows bootloader with GRUB on the MBR (Master Boot 
Record) of the disk, then the GRUB menu will be shown first at boot, 
and you will choose between Linux and an automatically-generated 
(usually) entry called "DOS" or the like.

Good Luck!

JC

--
John Casebolt -- Jackpine Technologies Corporation
(978) 263-6025 -- JEC at JackpineTech.com

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