Why would you do any of that? Just put the live cd in, and it'll deal with partitioning & formatting during the install, automatically if wished. Linux has come a long way since the early days, just as windows has.
And for adding HDDs after installation, you can plug and unplug them pretty freely, as with windows.
NT
I had some issue adding in extra HDD to my VISTA PC ... I downloaded free copy of Paragan Partition Manager - worked a treat
You can also get to it by right clicking on my computer and selecting "Manage" - it will be one of the later entries in the list of tools.
The early mounting of drive partitions can be done by the BIOS, but different ones have different capabilities. Many only recognise DOS style capabilities (i.e. only one primary partition, and then an extended partition with as many logical drives as you want etc). Windows (from 2K onwards) however is far more capable in that respect, and can handle lots of drive arrangements that the BIOS can't hack, like multiple primary partitions on the same drive, drives without drive letters, and drives grafted into the directory structure of other drives (*nix style) etc.
Tim Streater wrote on Jan 30, 2011:
The trouble with the Mac OS is that whatever the format, it leaves a whole lot of hidden files on any drive that it opens. This normally doesn't matter but I had a Garmin gps unit that totally freaked after I tried to read its flash card with my Mac.
fortunately, one can erase them.
Left my Nikon camera cluttered up with them all.
What version are you running?
I think it no longer does that with drives not formatted in HFS+. The memory card my wife's Pentax uses can be snapped in two to turn it into a USB stick (this process is reversible, BTW :-) and I just did that and checked in Terminal: no extra files added. She always plugs the card into her Mac and downloads the images that way to save battery. She's using 10.5.8 and I'm running latest SL.
So it's no longer a problem.
Tim Streater wrote on Jan 31, 2011:
I'm afraid it still is. Have you tried mounting a flash card on your Mac and then moving the card to a Windows machine?
I'm running 10.6.6 and I just tried mounting an empty MS-DOS formatted memory stick. There were three hidden folders placed on it: .fseventsd .Spotlight-V100 .Trashes
[.Trashes] is where deleted files are kept temporarily for example. I don't think OS X could function normally without it . I assume the other two folders are also fairly essential.
Hmmm, furtle furtle ... yes, you're right, these are created at the root of the drive when it's mounted. It was the .DS_store files that appear no longer to be created in each directory. I know that used to be a problem. SWMBO's Pentax doesn't appear to care, either way.
Tim Streater wrote on Jan 31, 2011:
Most things don't, but my Garmin GPSmap76 definitely does (it's a bug, I think). As I said though it isn't really a problem. BlueHarvest completely (and transparently) fixes it.
It's not new - in the DOS days you would have used FDISK and FORMAT. In general, to install a hard drive under Windows (or any OS, really), you need to do three things: Physically install and connect the drive, including setting up the BIOS if needed. Partition the drive. Format the new partition.
If you have a drive that's already been partitioned and formatted, then you may be able to skip the last two steps - but if it's completely blank, or the file system is inappropriate for the system you're adding it to, then you'll need to do them.
Mike
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