Installing Fedora via USB, on a prepartioned harddrive

[sinfell]

i just partitioned my 140 gb hard drive into two hardrives of 120g and 20 g. I boot via usb and then go to install it. Which install method should i pick? when it detects partitions like SDA#, all it shows is (NTFS, 0MB) for all my partitions.
Sorry if this has been asked before, thanks in advance.

[stoat]

I'm not really sure about what you mean or what you're seeing. Sorry. But if you're referring to the partitioning options in Anaconda (the Fedora installer), then consider the "Create custom layout" option. The the next screen will be the so-called disk druid which should display your partitions. There you can select one (or more) existing partitions and "Edit" it to reformat it to a filesystem type useable by Fedora, or you can "Delete" it and the create a "New" partition for Fedora in its place. Either way a little pop-up window appears for you to choose the mount point, filesystem type, size, encryption, etc.

Did that help any?

[sinfell]

are you saying that the partition i made on windows won't work for linux? so should i delete that partition (which is empty) and let linux create one?

[stoat]

Originally Posted by sinfell

are you saying that the partition i made on windows won't work for linux?

Yeah, probably. It is possible to use a so-called third party partition manager in Windows and create partitions that Fedora can use. But the Windows XP Disk Management utility isn't going to do that.

Originally Posted by sinfell

so should i delete that partition (which is empty) and let linux create one?

Yeah, probably. The Fedora installer (aka Anaconda) is completely capable of creating Fedora's partitions. Any of the partitioning options in Anaconda will do that. But read their descriptions carefully because they will do exactly what their descriptions say they do.

It might help your readers if you described the hard drives and partitions and existing operating systems better. For example, based on what you've posted so far, I'm guessing that you have one hard drive, and Windows XP is installed in the 120 GB partition, and you want to install Fedora in the 20 GB remaining, and you have a USB optical drive that boots the computer with the Fedora installation disk. Wrong? Then explain that stuff better. Right? Then there are several ways you can install Fedora into that 20 GB space. Instead of talking about all of them (you can read about them in the Installation Guide), I will just suggest what I like to do (surprise, surprise): Choose that "Create custom layout" partition option. In the disk druid, delete the 20 GB partition and in its place create a single root partition and a swap partition for Fedora. It works. It's simple. But it's not the only way. I will leave it to other people to advocate the advantages of other schemes.