Drive Partitions When Dual Booting My Asus 901

[Richb2004v2]

After much basic experimentation with a few different Linux distros and at one point switching back to XP I finally opted to try to set my little Asus eeePC as a dual boot machine. All seemed to go well I I thought I finally had a system I would be happy with and that would do all the simple tasks I require of it. Sadly I seem again to have been thwarted.

I have managed to set the dual boot and it looks as though it's running correctly, but for some reason my XP is very slow and I have not allowed enough space for Linux and it is now max'ed out. I've tried unsuccessfully to resize the Linux partition but there is a key icon by it and I can not adjust it.

I put both OS on one 7.6gig drive as I could not figure out how to add the two drives together, or even if it is possible. I was also wary of putting one OS on one drive and one on the other as I wasn't sure how it would boot from this set up.

So, what should I do? There seems to be a 4gig ssd and two drives of approx. 7.6 gig each. Should I use XP to format the 4 gig drive and one 7.6 gig drive and then reinstall XP on the remaining drive, then after wards put Linux on the other 7.6 gig drive?

Or should I put XP on one of the 7.6 gig drives and then Linux on the 4 gig ssd? I'm guessing 4 gig will be enough as I plan on installing Linux Mint. I'm not sure how it will boot with each OS on a seemingly separate drive. As it is now it boots to the Mint screen with the option to go into XP. I like it this way.

I've found a lot of info on dual booting from USB sticks and various other discussions on the dual boot topic, but nothing specifically about where to put XP and where to put my Linux distro on the 901 storage drives.

Help needed as I will make another attempt at it tomorrow.

With each of the topics I put on TV I get closer to satisfaction .

[HABITAT]

It is always a good idea to post complete machine spec - makes it easier for us to figure via proxy

Rule of thumb is XP first - then Linux, do default install with GRUB install.

XP without data, will run in 3G + swap.

I would use a minimalistic Linux - Puppy, Minime, etc - also 3G + swap

Booting USB can be problematic, at best, you need to know your way around GRUB also..

The 'buntus demand large resources, which you dont have. I would put data on USB

[bendejo]

I haven't been keeping up with the latest (I'm retired, y'know) but it used to be that you had to do your booting from the primary hd. This would mean you'd have to partition a 7Gb drive for booting both OS's. Then you can partition and format all the other drives to NTFS and you'll be able to access your data via either system. You'll have to juggle both your computer's boot selector and grub.

Another suggestion is to invest in a new disk -- they're cheap, y'know, like US$80 for 500Gb -- if you don't mind carrying around a 2.5" external (I would think that booting from one may not be too fast, we'll have to wait for USB3 for that). You would tell your computer to boot off of USB (in BIOS setup) and then the disk will offer up the grub selector

I like to have a lot of partitions, and my fave tool at the moment is gparted, there's even a live version that I can boot off of a pen drive. Can't say if it works on ssd's.

Another idea, which may sound goofy, is to have 2 dedicated, bootable pen drives, one for each OS, and boot off of whichever one is plugged in.

[Richb2004v2]

Ok, I have finally got round to taking a further look at my netbook, which I dual booted with XP and Mint some time back. The issue is that XP runs very slow and judderie on it and even Mint seems to e slower than it should be. I have attached pictures of the drives. I have no idea what I did. I am contemplating some how re-installing Mint only and doing away with XP (again).

Any suggestions?