longjohns

i'm not sure exactly what you're asking about file systems, but here's my (admittedly limited) understanding:

partition magic is capable of formatting in ext3 file system for linux. i would assume that windows installer is not (it doesn't even recognize the ext3 or linux swap partitions on my drive). if you were just using your windows disk to set up the drive, you would leave some of the drive unpartitioned, then let the linux installer format that remaining space into two partitions, the main one and then the swap one.

linux can read from ntfs, but i'm not sure it can write to it (and at the time i was reading up on this - maybe a year ago - even the ntfs reading capability was somewhat experimental.) hell, i never even got mine to read fat32, but what i was aiming to do was have a fat32 partition where i could keep things like media files (mp3's and whatnot) so that both operating systems could read them.

as to what cocktopus is saying about the boot loader - that article is talking about this issue. it works really well to copy the linux boot loader to a file on your main windows drive and use the ntloader to boot into both systems. it's basically just telling windows where to find the grub or lilo information on the disk if you choose to boot into linux. anyway that article explains it better than i can.

major partition magic actions need to be done kind of "outside" windows. it will tell you that it needs to shut down windows, and then it must set itself up some kind of batch file that it executes after restarting. but things can go wrong. one mistake i've made is trying to move your c: partition - just don't even consider doing this, i guarantee you will be reformatting your disk. actually i think i saved data by installing a second copy of windows on another partition and reading from the c: partition - even though it's windows was fucked beyond repair.

anyways you can tell i'm no expert but hopefully something useful there.