Need Input: a good Hard drive for installing Linux (Red Hat / FreeBSD)

[pellyg]

My computer has a SCSI set up and as far as I have been able to tell, the SCSI Card doesn't support installing Linux.

I'd like to install Red Hat or FreeBSD, so I am thinking of buying a *cheap* hard drive (I want to put as little additional $$ into this old PII as possible). Can anyone suggest a good HD manufacture or a good HD with linux drivers readily available?

Thanks,
Greg

[Cantacuzene]

Its not the scsi card not supporting linux, its a matter of linux not supporting the scsi card.

[Nija]

Originally posted by Cantacuzene
Its not the scsi card not supporting linux, its a matter of linux not supporting the scsi card.

exactly

most of the distro's have supported hardware listing's on their respective sites. A lot of the older stuff is supported.. it's a different matter with top-of-the-line stuff...

[pellyg]

Thanks for the help. I searched on FreeBSD.org and redhat.com and I believe that I found a line I'll need to add to some dotfile (I didn't read in detail yet) to make my SCSI card work.

For those who have installed linux (or tried to), can you advise: if I get halfway through a redhat or freeBSD setup and I can't get it configured and working, will I get my win98 setup back without a problem? I don't have a cd burner, either, so i don't have an easy way to backup files, which i'd hate to lose.

:bandit: ,
Greg

[rajatQ2]

Originally posted by pellyg
For those who have installed linux (or tried to), can you advise: if I get halfway through a redhat or freeBSD setup and I can't get it configured and working, will I get my win98 setup back without a problem? I don't have a cd burner, either, so i don't have an easy way to backup files, which i'd hate to lose.

:bandit: ,
Greg

chances are, the first step of the installation will be to format your hard disk. linux wont use Fat32, which is the format windows 98 runs on.

Heres a suggestion to be safe:
If you have a few gigs to play with on that drive, partition it up.

Make one partition a small (at least 1-1.5 gb) one and put your windows 98 on it, then leave the rest as an extended partition. That way you can install linux on the extended partition, and if you dont like it you still have a dual boot running, with working windows, and you can format the linux partition and use it for windows storage.

whew that was a long sentence. HTH

[pellyg]

good idea.
i like the sig, btw.