If you were installing a dual boot with vista and linux would you recommend separate hard drives?

Would you recommend separate hard drives or is partitioning ok? Is it hard to delete the partition and remerge it with the other partition if I ever decide to get rid of linux? Is it easier to add another hard drive?

If you were installing a dual boot with vista and linux would you recommend separate hard drives?
It's a little less risky to use two separate hard drives, just because if there's failure on one drive then you still have the other.





But as far as the partitioning goes, programs like Parition Commander or Disk Director are safe to use for creating or merging hard drive partitions. You just select the partition and click the "Resize" button, tell it how big or small you want it, and the rest is handled smoothly by the software.





Later, if you decide to get rid of the Linux partition, then it'll walk you through merging the two partitions without losing your data.





I have more detailed information at the link below, with screenshots, reviews, and coupon codes, so you can see what you'd be getting into before making a purchase.
Reply:Installing linux on a separate partition on one drive is no big deal. I have it on a separate harddrive in my desktop, but all of the laptops I have installed it on, and all the other desktops only had one drive available to partition between XP and Linux.





Grub is written to the MBR regardless - one drive or two. Otherwise you would not get the menu to work on boot-up.
Reply:I would, although partitioning will work. The downside of using the same drive is the MBR and other disk information tables are shared by the OS's. This increases the possibility of neither OS being able to boot if an unexpected system crash occurs.


As long as you are aware of the possibilities and back up your important data, you save the price of a drive.


I don't have experience with merging partitions with Vista but I'm told it has to be Vista premium. There are other utilities available that will do it.