Hi TRS-80 vet,
In answer to post #1:
When you see the first menu presented by the Live CD, there is a 30 sec timeout before it default boots (yes it has its own boot loader/manager) into RAM from your CD drive with no disks mounted. Nothing is installed on HDD at that point.
In answer to post #2:
Sometimes it is a good thing to ask questions before pulling the trigger, eh? Ok,
what if anything was/is installed on the HDD that you chose to partition? For example, if you have WinXP on that HDD and it was installed, it probably was installed to use the entire HDD - was it not?
In answer to post #3:
How do you know that the area of your HDD is free?
Advice:
Browse the TSG/Unix/Linux forum and find a post by saikee - you can use the search facility to do this if any are not apparent in the first two webpages of the forum. Look at saikee's signature where he has several links to topics that might be of interest to you if you are planning a dual-boot with Windows and Linux.
Before doing an OS installation with another OS already on the HDD, it is best to first defrag the HDD (esp. if Windows), backup the HDD to another drive or medium, and then proceed. It is not necessarily a bad thing to choose the largest free area of the disk, as long as the above other items have been taken care of first.
-- Tom