Interesting. Will winXP run on the second hard drive (sdb) if the primary drive is sda?
I would think yes, I’ve booted Windows off of a hd2 drive long, long ago. Grub may get complicated but should work. Or put Windows XP on sda1 instead of Windows 7 and Windows 7 on sdb1.
These Windows installs are all future specalations. Initially, she just wants to save space for Windows on sda. She could just leave sda1 200Gb unformatted until she decides what she wants for Windows XP or Windows 7. Then when ready she can split sda 50/50 for both and allocate additional NTFS space on sdb.
I noted you mentioned it had only 500mb onboard video ram, for HD that is pretty low can it be upgraded now or in future?
As for IDE and SATA, the drives internally are PATA using IDE EISA handshake. The SATA just serializes the PATA signals just as external USB serializes the PATA or envelopes the SATA signaling. I know of no MBO that will not be able to handle any mix of PATA SATA and USB-Storage. Now to whey in on an earlier statement made about SCSI, Win 7 no longer fully supports SCSI as for about 90% of the intended market better alternatives using USB SATA and PATA mixes seem to work better. Originally, Vista was supposed to abandon SCSI support but there was too much business complaint.
I gave some thought to this BEFORE recommending the card to my wife.
I note that 512MB is not bad for onboard video RAM for HD playback and I also note perspectives change in time, especially wrt RAM. Now I say this understanding that one needs lots of RAM on the graphic card, so as to minimize any bus traffic.
I did a lot of research into this just before I purchased a nVidia 8400GS graphic PCI card (not PCI-e) for an old PC. RAM is IMHO specially important for old PCI card (I don’t mean a PCI-e card) as IMHO for the slower PCI card bus, the traffic has slower throughput compared to the AGP and PCI-e bus (due to the smaller PCI bus bandwidth). There were many dozens of posts in other forums debating how much memory one needed for HD video on a nVidia video card that supported VDPAU (also known as Pure Video in Windows). The concensus was 256MB should work well and 512MB only for very large resolution HD videos, and presumeably larger than 512MB only for videos that are 1920x1080 at very very high bit rates (such as 25MB/sec).
My nVidia 8400GS PCI card (not PCI-e) with 512 MB of RAM on an old 32-bit athlon-2800 works well for all but the very highest HD videos with the very highest bit rates … For example, using the proprietary nVidia driver with VDPAU it plays back videos at 1920x1080 @ 8MB/sec with no problem. Another example, it plays back videos a 1920x816 @ 24.9MB/sec with no problem. But I also note it struggles with videos at 1920x1080 @ 25MB/sec. Thats on an old PCI bus with a 32-bit Athlon-2800.
My wife’s PC will be using a PCI-e bus on a Core i7 and hence it is much faster. I don’t see any problem playing back HD videos with that combination (with a nVidia G210 PCI-e card), so I don’t believe more than 512MB on the graphic card is needed for HD video.
Reference to your question, I don’t know if the on-board memory on the graphic card can be expanded, but I also don’t think it important for my wife’s use.
I’ve read accounts (albeith somewhat old) of Linux and Windows (XP/Vista) with some motherboards not being able to handle two drives, where one was SATA and one was IDE. I have no idea if the motherboard that my wife has ordered will fall under that category.
I’ve read accounts (albeith somewhat old) of Linux and Windows (XP/Vista) with some motherboards not being able to handle two drives, where one was SATA and one was IDE. I have no idea if the motherboard that my wife has ordered will fall under that category.
You are right, in older units that had only PATA IDE interfaces it was more of a BIOS problem not being able to handle SATA but the newer BIOSes are supposed to have corrected the problem. IME I have encountered such a problem since 2004 or 5.
I came home after work, and discovered that my wife’s new PC had arrived. She wasted no time taking it apart and looking under the hood (while I was a passive but definitely interested bystander) :
http://thumbnails29.imagebam.com/10830/aafbb4108293488.jpg](http://www.imagebam.com/image/aafbb4108293488) .http://thumbnails33.imagebam.com/10830/5c1984108293468.jpg](http://www.imagebam.com/image/5c1984108293468) . http://thumbnails32.imagebam.com/10830/441c4f108293489.jpg](http://www.imagebam.com/image/441c4f108293489)
… I’m not sure when she will install an OS on this PC. Currently she is backing up her old PCs hard drive to an external USB drive. Once that is done, it will free up her monitor, mouse and keyboard to plug in to the new PC.
I pointed out to her we have 3 spare hardware KVM switches and she could use one ! … and she is pondering now if she wants to make use of one of them.
She still has not decided how she wants to partition the hard drive …
… more news to follow this weekend.
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ken yap wrote:
>
> You’ll probably be very qualified to write a Wiki article on -How to
> convert a family member to Linux- when you’re finished. :good:
>
>
I already converted my girlfriend to openSUSE, was easy, I just say: “It
has no virus, no blue screen, is faster, have games and cool 3D efects”,
2 weeks later she ask me to remove XP and install openSUSE 
It also works with my grandmother
VampirD
Microsoft Windows is like air conditioning
Stops working when you open a window.
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oldcpu wrote:
>
> jdmcdaniel3;2255569 Wrote:
>> I don’t agree with having more than one NTFS partition. Let it be
>> Windows or Not, but have two of the same type on the same drive does not
>> make sense to me.Me too, … BUT my wife figures she will be re-installing win7 multiple
> times (based on her winXP experience) and so she wants a separate NTFS
> for data that will not be touched by ‘clean’ win7 re-installs.
>
> jdmcdaniel3;2255569 Wrote:
>> I would consider loading a standard MBR and putting the grub loader
>> into the extended partition drive holder. It appears you can do this
>> and not mess up the logical drives within. As for the main openSUSE
>> partition, I suggest it be 40 GB and then the rest into /home. The
>> Extended partition should be last in my estimation. That would look
>> like this:
>>
>> MBR - Generic Booting Code
>> sda1 100 MB System, (Active when installed), Primary
>> sda2 299.9 GB Windows,Primary
>> sda3 2 GB Primary,SWAP
>> sda4 200 GB Primary, (Active after you install openSUSE), Grub Loaded,
>> Extended Partition
>> sda5 40 GB Logical Drive, / openSUSE partition
>> sda6 160 GB Logical Drive, /home Partition Assuming the 300GB 2nd drive can’t be used, then after pondering this
> some more, I am thinking of recommending the following configuration to
> my wife, BEFORE win7 gets installed:
>
> MBR - Generic Booting Code
> sda1 - 150 GB NTFS primary - blank but formatted as NTFS
> sda3 - 2 GB primary - swap
> sda4 - 348 GB Primary, active after install openSUSE, Grub loaded,
> Extended partition
> sda5 - 150 GB Logical Drive - NTFS partition
> sda6 - 25 GB Logical Drive - / openSUSE partition
> sda7 - 173 GB Logical Drive - /home openSUSE partition
>
> And then when installing win7, point it to the sda1 which hopefully it
> will carve up into two separate partitions.
>
> I’m also tempted to NOT put the swap as a primary, but rather move it
> to the extended area, which would mean instead:
>
> MBR - Generic Booting Code
> sda1 - 150 GB NTFS primary - blank but formatted as NTFS
> sda4 - 350 GB Primary, active after install openSUSE, Grub loaded,
> Extended partition
> sda5 - 2 GB primary - swap
> sda6 - 150 GB Logical Drive - NTFS partition
> sda7 - 25 GB Logical Drive - / openSUSE partition
> sda8 - 173 GB Logical Drive - /home openSUSE partition
>
> I need to surf to see if there are performance hits when having swap on
> extended. Given her PC is to have 6GB of RAM, I suspect it does not
> matter where the swap is located (but I don’t know for certain).
>
>
The few times I installed 7 I notice that: if you install it on a blank
HDD the installer doas what he want, but if you make the partitions and
then install it just touch what you want, anyway with 6GB of RAM I
consider to install 7 on a virtualbox
VampirD
Microsoft Windows is like air conditioning
Stops working when you open a window.
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oldcpu wrote:
>
> oldcpu;2255706 Wrote:
>> Use of the second 300GB drive (which is about 3 years old) is a viable
>> option to work around some of the complexity. I need to check to see if
>> this drive is SATA or IDE, as sometimes Linux struggles with having both
>> SATA and IDE on the same PC (SATA controller chipset dependant).My wife had to go to work this weekend, so I jumped on her old PC (that
> she will be giving away), booted to openSUSE-11.3, and ran the following
> to get some more information:
>
> Code:
> --------------------
> df -Th
> /sbin/lspci -nnk
> hwinfo > hwinfo.txt
> --------------------
> and checked out hwinfo.txt with a text editor.
>
> 1st note, … her primary drive in her old PC is an 80GB IDE drive
> (Western Digital Caviar IDE) that will stay in the old PC. It is the
> Primary IDE master in her old PC.
>
> 2nd note, … She has no extra ‘300 GB’ drive, but rather her second
> drive is in fact a ‘500 GB’ drive (and not 300 GB) and it is the primary
> IDE slave drive in her old PC. This second drive is also an IDE drive
> (Ultra ATA/100 interface - more precisely, the second drive is a
> Baracuda 7200-10 Ultra ATA/100 500GB - ST3500630A).
>
> So there is a risk openSUSE may struggle with having both a SATA and an
> IDE drive in same PC. And there is also a risk that win7 may struggle
> with having both a SATA and an IDE drive in same PC. So even though
> having a spare 500GB drive is nice, it may not be practical to put this
> drive in her new PC.
>
> I’ll have to ‘play this by ear’ and not count on this being usable in
> my planning (although it may work).
>
>
I have 2 PC with SATA and IDE, my girl’s PC just work out of the box
(openSUSE on the IDE), my PC, I have to change the grub parameters to
boot correctly because during the boot, both HDD swap its devices name
(sda <-> sdb)
VampirD
Microsoft Windows is like air conditioning
Stops working when you open a window.
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The few times I’ve tried to convert Windows users to OpenSuSe or Linux they complain about missing Netflix or they absolutely need to use MS Office 20zz. Even when the missus had used OpenOffice several times she still claims she couldn’t open an MS Office document. The only person I have managed to switch so far is my brother and he’s using LinuxMint although like me he still keeps Windows on a few PCs.
I like my KVM that also switches audio. Some days I wish I had a 3 CPU model, but even the all-USB 2 CPU models are pricier and DVI models are exponentially pricier.
Interesting case, is it all metal? Nice big PSU, love large fans, looks short on PCI slots, but lots of room for HDDs. Can’t tell if you can install HDD from the front or not, versus temporarily removing memory to install HDD/DVDs.
Curious that SATA drive slots are like PCI slots, ie, 1 slot to 1 SATA device. I guess better throughput.
Sounds like a blank canvas to me, sure to be fun 
Hah, very true! I know my fiance probably wouldn’t notice/care if I were to sneak and switch her from Windows 7 to openSUSE in the middle of the night…Hmmmm :idea:
-Anthony
Thanks for all the comments … Its been an interesting couple of hours.
After the backups were done on the old PC, my Thai wife connected up a keyboard, mouse, monitor, and ethernet connection to the new PC, and she switched on the new PC. We had previous agreed for her to press DEL to go to BIOS, but she was slow, and the PC went and booted to Windows7 (Deutsch). … That was a surprise.
I sent her a puzzled look.
I was certain she told me she did not purchase Windows7. … She stated she did not pay any extra money for Windows7 in this PC, but there was no denying the evidence. It booted to Windows7 Home Premium version. And it was a Deutsch version.
Anyway, that caused a quick re-think of her re-partitioning plans. She also noted she wanted an English version of Windows7, so she may end up paying Microsoft even more money to get an English version! < grrrrrr > … anyway, she rebooted to the BIOS and checked the settings there. All appeared fine.
She then inserted the openSUSE-11.3 liveCD and confirmed it booted ok. She checked internet, and identification of the hard drive.
Then she rebooted to Windows7, and repartitioned the hard drive with Windows7 on it. But since it was in Deutsche, it was a quick phone call to her Thai girlfriend (who speaks fluent German and knows PC’s very well) so to get her help in repartitioning from Windows7. Windows7 then allowed the hard drive to be partitioned into three partitions, … 100MB Windows, 243 GB Windows7, and 243 GB unallocated partition.
After successfully repartitioning from Windows7, she then rebooted, changing the openSUSE-11.3 liveCD for the openSUSE-11.3 installation DVD and she installed openSUSE-11.3 on the 243 GB unallocated area. So the 500GB SATA drive looks like:
- sda1 = 100 MB primary NTFS windows partition (associated with Windows7 boot)
- sda2 = 243 GB primary NTFS windows7 partition
- sda3 = 243 GB extended
- sda5 = 2 GB logical (inside extended) Linux swap partition
- sda6 = 25 GB logical (inside extended) / partition for openSUSE-11.3
- sda7 = 216 GB logical (inside extended) /home partition for openSUSE-11.3.
Installation was smooth. The nVidia G210 booted fine to the nouveau driver. No 3D special desktop effects, but other than that the desktop is fine!
My wife’s first act after rebooting was to get me to show her how to install Virtual Box. With guidance from me she downloaded the proprietary Virtual Box and installed it, and added her user to the vboxuser account. But she has not yet installed another OS under Virtual Box (it was getting late).
Then after I explained to her about software repositories (OSS, Non-OSS, Update and Packman) she went to YaST > Software > Software Repositories, and disabled the DVD as repository and added Packman. Then to Software Management and she switched System Packages to Packman. That replaced a number of ‘crippled’ SuSE-GmbH packaged apps with Packman packaged versions. Then she added smplayer, vlc and acroread, and she tested sound (it worked) and then called it a night.
Tomorrow I’m going to help her install the proprietary nVidia driver. She may also add her used 500GB hard drive to the PC tomorrow, and possibly install another Windows operating system under Virtual Box. And tomorrow she needs to add her local printer (an old HP inkjet) and also add our network printer/scanner (another HP printer/scanner).
So things did not ‘pan out’ as planned, but they did ‘pan out’ ok, and thus far no major hiccups, which is always a good sign.
Things worked out well for all that planning. Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth, ie, Windows 7 Deutsch.
I think changing language is as simple as changing the display language, unless the OEM removed the other language packages.
Windows 7 | Start Menu | Control Panel | Region and Language | Format: English (favorite country) and she’s done.
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows7/Install-or-change-a-display-language
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows/downloads/languages
](http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows-vista/Change-the-display-language)
I came home after work, and discovered that my wife’s new PC had arrived. She wasted no time taking it apart and looking under the hood (while I was a passive but definitely interested bystander) :
I fail to understand as to “Why would anyone take apart a brand new rig”
Also i see a face in the second pic,i noticed it only when i actually clicked and opened it in imagebeam
lol ! …
Thats my wife ! (although I confess I would probably almost do the same).
She was curious to see what was inside! BUT she tends to go one step further than me. While I would open up a case and take pictures AND not touch, she opens up the case, and then methodically removes the cables (so as to get a better look) and then methodically reconnects them again (to my horror) !
Sounds like she might go further than you in the Open Source world.
It turns out this is some sort of 30 day trial Win7 that was on the PC. So presumeably they charged us nothing for this, and my wife purchasing win7 later next month won’t have her paying twice the price for win7.
Indeed she is the educated one in our family, with an Engineering Degree and an MBA from Thailand, and a Masters in Engineering from a Germany University.
Ah! my kind of gal. You can’t really appreciate what you have/don’t have till you dive in rip it’s innards out!