--  "About the Inspiron 3800"

    [Partitioning]

    Since I opted for a dual-OS installation, I needed to deal
    with the thorny issue of disk partitioning such that Windows
    didn't go crazy on me.  I got ahold of the Ranish Partition
    Manager, located at

         http://www.users.intercom.com/~ranish/part/

    I created a boot disk and put a copy of the manager on that
    disk, just to be safe.  I then used the "Disk Defragmenter"
    (should be a standard Windows tool under "Program") to
    scrunch all the data towards the beginning of the big C:
    partition.  That took a couple of hours.

    With the disk compressed, I booted up Ranish from the floppy
    and (eventually -- this part took many iterations and too
    many wasted days to get right) did the following:

         *  Reduce your C: partition.  I choose to keep 2GB in
            mine, but I also have a 12GB disk drive.

         *  Created an Extended partition.  Even if you want
            a second logical Windows disk (your "D:" drive),
            you must do this.  If you have more than 1 primary
            Windows disk, DOS will probably not see it.  Worse,
            Windows will and go nuts -- it would assign that
            second logical Windows disk to "E:" and the extended
            partition (which holds all the Linux partitions) to
            a phantom "D:" drive.  Imagine a drive that is not a
            Windows drive.  You have to constantly deal with
            Windows tools that test all the hard disk drives,
            like Norton Utilities or (better yet) the Recycle Bin
            "Delete" function, which empties it out.  Since the
            Recycle Bin is really just space on each disk drive,
            the "Delete" function queries all of them.  When it
            comes to the phantom "D:" drive, it decides that that
            drive is not a Windows drive and needs formatting!!!
            Fortunately, you can click "No" to avoid destroying
            your Linux installation, but it's a real pain.

            The solution that works is to have a single primary
            partition which is your C: partition, and all the
            secondary Windows disks and Linux partitions are
            placed in the Extended partition-chain.

         *  Created the Extended partition-chain.  This involves
            creating a "real" logical partition and another
            Extended partition-chain for the remaining "real"
            partitions.  In my case, I wanted a Windows data
            drive (my "D:" drive), plus / (root), swap, /home,
            and /home1 under Linux.  That's 5 partitions.  So
            my partition table looks like

            Primary partition 1        Windows FAT-32      C:
            Primary partition 2        Extended
               |
               `-- Windows FAT-32                          D:
                   Extended
                      |
                      `-- Linux                            /
                          Extended
                             |
                             `-- Linux                     (swap)
                                 Extended
                                    |
                                    `-- Linux              /home
                                        Extended
                                           |
                                           `-- Linux       /home1

         *  Ranish will complain about one or more of the Extended
            partitions not having proper boot sector information.
            That can be ignored.  It'll magically disappear after
            the partition information is written, although you may
            need to exit and restart Partition Manager to see that
            effect.

            Also, you should go ahead and format the D: drive.
            Since RedHat will provide the option of formatting the
            Linux partitions (except for swap), you can avoid
            doing those partitions under Partition Manager.

         *  Although it'll probably never be that useful, you should
            provide mount points for the Windows partitions under
            Linux.  I use the following:

                 C: drive partition      /windoze/win98_os
                 D: drive partition      /windoze/win98_data

            You can read the files in those partitions under Linux,
            but you need to be root to modify them.  Also, some
            Linux file types are unavailable, such as symbolic links.