Hello I post on Linux forum not get the answer http://www.linuxforums.org/forum/installation/140659-disk-config-dual-boot.html [url=http://www.sieuthi77.com/main/nhakhoa.html]nha khoa[/url]. com/showthread.php?t=23423 I am building a new PC from scratch and want to dual boot XP and Ubuntu. I have two 1TB drives. I was planning to run RAID 1, whereby one drive would mirror the other drive, and install XP, Ubuntu, and all data on the single drive. Now I’m thinking maybe I should reserve the 1TB drive for data and install two smaller drives, one to hold XP and one to hold Ubuntu and their respective programs. In this latter config, the OS and programs would not be mirrored. I’m new to dual booting and linux. I was hoping someone could give me some advice on the best way to configure everything. Thanks in advance.

It depends on what kind of backup solution you have for data. If you have a reliable automated solution, buy some smaller drives and put them in a raid 1, then create 1 partition with approx 20-30GB for Windows. Once Windows is installed, put in the Ubuntu disk and install it on the remaining space. Then finally attach one of the 1TB drives and format it with NTFS and use it to store your data. It usually doesn't make sense to use a raid1 for data, because data has to be backed up regularly, anyway. The simplest solution would be to simply create a 1TB raid1 with both drives and use partitioning to put windows, ubuntu, and a shared ntfs data partition on it. Remeber to always install Windows first, as it doesn't recognize an already present linux installation and overwrites the MBR, so that linux can't start anymore afterwards.

In this case I recommend 3 physical drives: 1 for boot, root, and swap partitions that will hold installed software and libraries. 2 (mirrored) for /home - all the user directories and development trees, database, application data, etc. You can always reinstall your OS and applications, but your critical data is another thing. Also, you can store a compressed backup image of the boot drive on the data drive which can easily be used to restore your boot image and installed software with almost any liveCD or recovery disc.

yes it's ok now

Yess

Thanks for that @ rubberman.