As outlined in the General Information Section, Linux uses a different type of file system than Windows 95. The two cannot coexist on one drive without partitioning the drive into 2 separate sections. The best tool for this, the one I use, is called Parition Magic. This allows non-destructive partitioning of your drive. In other words the data is not affected when the drive is rearranged. When in the main program, select the drive you wish to partition, usually drive 1. Now click the resize button on the base of the screen. Parition Magic will only allow you to reduce the size of your drive so that the contents of your Hard Drive will remain unaffected. There is a space called "Free Space After", this is where you should tell the program how big you want your Linux 'Hard Disk' to be. A good size to choose is about 400 Megs+. This will allow you to put more software on as time goes on. Try to give the partition as much space as you can afford, in the long run, it will save you having to repartition and reinstall Linux.

Partition Magic will also allow you to change the 'Cluster Size' of your C: drive. You should set this value to 16k per cluster (This is known as FAT). This will allow you later on to let Linux access your Windows area on the Hard Disk. After the restructuring of your drive, which will take about 30 mins, you should restart the computer, and load Windows 95. This will prepare you for the next step of creating a boot disk.

The Blank partition of the disk will also have to be setup as a Linux Partition. I find it much easier to do this using a program called FDISK which will be placed on the startup disk when it is created. Changing of the Partition type will be covered in the installation section.

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