Thread: Is a dual-boot with karmic and xp using RAID and LVM possible?

after more 10 years away unix / linux, in process of setting new box @ home. migrate entirely away windows, fear may need work, , since i've been using xp since came out (what, 8 years now?) plan stick rather learning windows 7 windows stuff may need do.

since i'm impatient, earlier week set dual-boot system karmic 9.10 (with kubuntu desktop) , xp professional sp3. have 40gb ssd 12gb xp , rest /boot, swap , /.

read raid , lvm when in process of building machine, , seemed cool have, have 3 - 640gb western digital drives each entire drive set on raid5, , entire raid array volume group. on have logical volume (i thought) windows, formatted in fat32, , logical volumes (acting partitions) /home, /opt, /tmp, /usr , /var formatted in ext3. root on ssd own logical volume. have encrypted linux partitions except /boot, not fat32 partitions.

of course, went ahead , set raid5 assuming i'd able make windows xp see it, sees 3 drives. there way make xp see lv fat32 file system on it, or need start over?

or load apps need onto fat32 lv using wine? can abandon windows entirely using wine? windows apps may need work access , excel. other windows apps want (don't need) games. gamers @ work run in wine, if i'm going night, won't play world of warcraft, build report or db, has work every time.

if have start over, better off giving 1 of 640gb drives windows , making other 2 raid1 karmic? (part of reason want use ubuntu because makes doing raid , lvm pretty easy. tried first using gentoo , incomplete instructions 'net, ended big hash on 3 drives. i'm still not sure did, exactly.)

thing ubuntu supports kvm. want run xp virtual machine on top of karmic xp never sees internet (i hate viruses), i'll worry figuring out after figure part out. (is kvm way go? xen? i'd use open source, if possible.)

btw, mobo have fakeraid capability, after reading many posts hesitant use that. also, if helps, processor amd phenom ii x4, 8gb ddr3, nvidia graphics card.

i'm not worried losing data (yet), fresh machine nothing lose time i've put current setup, if have to, can start over, painful be. want have either raid1 or raid5 mirror linux data, not concerned windows data.

suggestions on how should proceed here? way ambitious in want newb? (it's ok, can handle truth.)

i'm not sure raid situation, i've never set up. can imagine easiest thing have separate non-raid drive windows. see no need have windows on fat32, linux has great native support ntfs nowadays , ntfs better filesystem. know situations need raid drivers on floppy disk windows installer, or can slipstream them in nlite.

suggest use windows vm. think can't in vm play 3d video games or huge cad stuff. if needed that, i'd either use 1 of drives windows or grab cheap 80-gig drive somewhere , use windows boot. use virtual box of windows need , have never had problem. virtualbox super easy set up, , can done in gui. i'd suggest sun's website, have own repository has features usb support , other things.


http://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/linux_downloads

games work fine under wine, typically more popular, wow, team fortress 2 (last time checked), counterstrike, have you. wine has great database of works, how works, , sorts of weird things may need things working.

http://appdb.winehq.org/


know there other virtualization tools, xen, vmware, etc, understand fine , work great, desktop user virtualbox best far i'm concerned. others gather more targeted towards server-type applications (which fine, , virtualbox too) desktop user means more scripting , learning lots of commands you'll use anyways.

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