locking out a hdd

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pyromaniac511

New Member
how can i lock a hdd so nothing gets installed on it. i have 2 10gb partitions and a 100gb. 1 for windows 1 for linux and the big one for storage. i want to lock out the o/s partitions. thanks
 
That's a complicated setup where you would have to disable all administrative privileges on all user accounts as software installations or removals. But any drive itself can be accessed with a boot off of a boot floppy or floppy image burned to cd as well as booting off of a Linux Live cd. Unless the entire drive has a specific encryption to lock it up with you are left with that vulnerability.
 
im not wanting anything secure i just want the drive to be o/s only. i tried before not to install anything on it but when i stuck stuff on other drives it put small things on my c which filled it up. is there a more simpler way or if not mabie a walkthrough written on the internet somewhere. i am fairly savy with comps but i am no genious. with propper instructions i believe i can handle it.
 
The first thing to remember about both Windows and Linux is the need for space on the drive for swap files. While Linux usually requires a 2gb partition in many cases for a swap partition XP especially needs at least 2gb of drive space for temporary swap files when running large apps. A 20gb drive for dual OSing is a little cramped even without installing a large number of programs. I know that from custom installing both Windows as well as softwares while dual booting a Liunux distro on a drive now being used elsewhere. I currently run a pair of 250gb ide drives with room aside on the second for Vista or Linux once again. Unfortunately XP has a restorative process that creates backups of programs installed as well as the need for installation info in the event a system restore point is needed. Hidden information grows in size!
 
would 15 gigs per o/s be better or what size would you recomend.is there any way to disable the back up folders..... i only need linux to run shake and some video tracking software. i dont keep large files on my local disk either, i normaly stick em on my portables
 
With Linux you know already that you have to create 3 or 4 small partitions just to run one or two distros with even shared one there. But Linux is an OS based primarily on the UNIX platform in the days when a 20mb hard drive never mind a 20gb drive was a giant! You can cram a small distro on an old 1.2 or 1.4gb drive without problem in most cases. Windows and MAC alike are geared with higher capacity drives and large amounts of ram in mind. You could easily drop a 40gb drive in there with plenty of room for the XP side of things and still have a 10gb space for Linux. Then you would still have room after custom installing your softwares on the XP side mainly the primary.
 
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