On 2012-12-10 15:56 (GMT-0800) Adam Williamson composed:
Windows is very keen on formatting disks, or at least was last time I
checked it.
Lately?
You had to go into an advanced dialog to do anything other
than let it have its way with an entire disk.
Not that I can remember seeing.
I always partition prior to installing anything.
As a consequence, whenever I boot WinXP install CD, without any action on my
part beyond accepting license and answering are you sure, it presents me a
list of partitions, and waits on me to select one to be the installation
target. After I select, it presents a list that includes:
do not format
format FAT
format NTFS
This simplicity is what one gets from Mageia via readonly=1, and what I
expect from other installers.
The only "its way" I encounter happens when I forget to set a "C:" primary
"active" before booting the XP installation CD, whereupon it does so "for" me
sometime before it finishes. From what I know from mailing lists, forums, and
conversations over more than a decade, "its way" also includes replacing the
MBR code if it finds non-legacy code there, e.g. Grub. When Grub has been
installed to a primary partition instead of MBR, it leaves Grub untouched,
and the only post-Windows installation "repair" necessary to restore active
status to the partition carrying the master bootloader, if desired.
I installed Win8 beta once on a multiboot system with far more native Linux
partitions than Windows or DOS native. It did nothing that required me to fix
anything afterward, other than removing it after I discovered how its new UI
doesn't work, and restoring C: to its pre-installation state to get access to
XP's D: back.
"Its way" more appropriately describes what Grub does to a HDs first sectors
if not aptly constrained.
--
"The wise are known for their understanding, and pleasant
words are persuasive." Proverbs 16:21 (New Living Translation)
Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 ** a11y rocks!
Felix Miata *** http://fm.no-ip.com/
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