You know, partitions are up to you, but of course there are general recommendations how you should partition your HD. Some of the general rules that I would follow for partitioning my HD for Mandrake are:
 
-Create a boot partition at least 100Mb
-Create a Swap partition three times greater than your RAM, so if you have a 256 RAM multiply it by 3.
-Creat a Root( / ) partition and I would say about 60 to 70% of your HD.
-Create a Home partition (/home) with 25% to 30% of your HD or just use whatever space is left.
 
You can go on creating additional partions if you prefer such as for /var, /www, etc...but usually I never did.
 
There are many tutorials online that will give some general guidelines for this as well:
 
http://www.linuxplanet.com/linuxplanet/tutorials/3174/1/
 
Right now I'm using ProMepis and the only partitions I need are swap, and root, but it is always suggested to make some partitions for security porpuses.

The download version has 3 iso's to get. Let's also make sure that you got the right ones. What is the exact name of the first iso image that you downloaded?
 
Is it Mandrakelinux-10.1-Community-cd1.i586.iso?

thanx LinuxCrusader & danleff
its really help
i ll try it after this
 
emmm
this is what i have download.
>> Mandrakelinux-10.1-Official-Download-CD1.i586.iso
>> Mandrakelinux-10.1-Official-Download-CD2.i586.iso
>> Mandrakelinux-10.1-Official-Download-CD3.i586.iso
>> Mandrakelinux-10.1-Official-Mini.i586.iso <--- anyway what is this file for? i download it coz it a iso file

Quote:Mandrakelinux-10.1-Official-Mini.i586.iso <--- anyway what is this file for? i download it coz it a iso file

You don't need the mini iso disk, the others are the correct disks, only three. The mini disk is good as a rescue disk, or to install the distro from a hard drive.

Make sure that you burn them at a slow speed, say 4X or 9X, as iso files like to be burned at a slow speed.

Also, make sure that you burn as an image, don't just burn the iso's as a data disk. For example, if you are using Nero to burn the images, choose from the dropdown menu file-->burn image, for each iso file.

Hi all,
regarding partitions.
If you use auto allocate after selecting the 17gig portion of your drive, you will be ok.
I currently use 18gig for Mandrake 10.1official
5.8gig /root
1gig swap
the rest for /home
Dual booting Mandrake & XP pro for games

emmm...
ic...
thanx for the help...
i already compllete installing mandrake..
now tryin this make me feel free from windows...
hehe..
and already sussecful configure my internet connection (read instructions from forum)
 
thanx guys ..
all of u really helpin..