bjoernvold.com

It's been so long since I've done this, that I've forgotten. I'm doing this here, but can't remember how the partitioning goes, and I have no graphical representation in either Fedora or Arch, to tell me what I'm using to not delete Windows. Both installers are displaying as tty mode on the netbook, which makes it difficult. I'm trying to remember what the first step is to partition so I can install Arch (preferably), after several tries, and not remembering what I'm doing. Would it be to resize (shrink) the windows partition, then go from there? If so, how do I tell in the installer at the partitioning step, which is the Windows partition? It's not being very forthcoming on what's what that's already there, and I really can't afford to lose windows because of school. I have no cd/dvd drive on the netbook, I am using unetbootin, which is working fine, I just can't remember the order to do things, or what they look like in tty mode (text). I'm installing each on the same hard drive. I do know that neither distro is showing free space on the drive to install too; I'm assuming that this is because the Windows partition needs resizing (shrinking, which is what I need to figure out in the Arch installer on the partitioning step).

Thanks.

Defrag Windows is the first step, iianm. While there, I would get an idea of how much disk Windows is using, how much do you want to reserve.

For re-sizing, I'd trust gparted, which can be got on livecd iso, which you might be able to make a key out of with unetbootin. gparted shows how much disk space is being used by the os. I don't know why you can't get an installer running in X but if you can't get graphics no way no how, maybe gparted will run in framebuffer. Assuming success with gparted and re-sizing, I'd use gparted to make partitions, too. I've got no idea how to resize in tty. What partitioning I've done with fdisk or cfdisk was few and long ago, so I'd have to be off to google on that count.

I think this is where you are at.
Defragment first according to guru, and make space available from within Windows. When you have a unalocated area of some 30 GB. Then you should be able to install; pick the «Use the largest continuous free space» option

Arch is all manual so if you have forgot why not let Fedora, Mandriva or Ubuntu auto build the structure for you, and install Arch using that existing structure later. Those distros would then replace/do the job of gparted - kind of.
Do I make any sense

No, sorry, you're not, as I said, even Fedora is not giving me a graphical installer. I think it may have to do with screen size or type on the netbook. Not interested in Mandriva, but *may* get interested in LMDE. What I need to figure out, is which '/dev' windbloze is,,, /dev/sdax? /dev/sda? /dev/sda1? I can't tell. However, I have spoken with someone about it, and may have figured it out (I am not 100% sure by any means). They say I need to resize the windows partition to what I want it to be first, then format and install to what's left over. I am going to give windows only 80 gigs at best, maybe only 60. Linux will have a helluva lot more than 30, Boss. I refuse to let windows be the main of the netbook. It is only there for school.

Already knew about defragging and running a full scandisk first. Just needed the partitioning advice.

Thought of gparted yesterday and downloaded it. Not 100% if it will get used or not but it's there if needed.

The one and only thing I don't like about Linux - things are not very forthcoming or explained very well in text mode on things like this. I do not see the option in the Arch installer that Boss speaks of above. I don't even see an option to 'Resize Partition' of any kind in it. None of the options really make sense or are self-describing, however, it's not just Arch. That's the problem. Give me one good graphical representation of what's what, and I'd be fine, but noooo... we can't do that. :p I suppose I could try the idea of using another distro and then install Arch, but if I'm not even getting a graphical installer with Fedora, only something saying 'which drive do you want to partition?', without asking how I want to partition what, showing me graphically *what* I'm partitioning, with a drop-down for /dev/sda, and another couple choices, I feel I'm screwed there, too.

Uh sorry I am not sure about Fedora so I should not have mentioned it. And in general for not making sense, As always there are no stupid questions only stupid answers so I will try to improve

Regarding resizing Windows you can do that from within Windows as I have pointed out above. And you can do it all with gparted - as rolf has described.
Windows needs 30 % free space to keep its speed up, so if you have used 100 GB you can take anything above 130 GB for Linux.
You can put parted magic on a stick with Unetbootin and boot from it and do your partitioning and resizing from there.
http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distri ... artedmagic

Now regarding the different partitions this will help.
Regarding your existing structure you might be able to run fdisk -l as root from partedmagic.

He said; hoping to makes sense...

Yeah, I know about the free space Windows needs, and yeah, this time you make sense. I have only used some 30-40GBs in it, and don't intend much more, so the 80GBs should be plenty.

I would like to know how to do the partitioning from within windows. I went to one place that said how, but I am not seeing it from this tiny screen, i.e.:

Clickety-click:



And, clickety-click:



I see nothing showing me anything but the dark blue in the first shot, although there are different colors for each thing there.

So, how do I do the partitioning from within Windows? Thanks.

Edit to add: I had read the dual-boot page that you posted, Boss (read it in class Saturday, while fidgeting), and a couple things have just dawned on me about it... will give it another shot maybe. Thanks.

Edit again: Thanks to that, I now remember. Thanks, Boss.
I may not need to partition from within windows now, but I'd still like to know how it's done.

On your first Clickety click you can drag to reduce your partitions. The resulting unallocated space can be formated as Fat or ntfs but I don't think you can make ext4.
I will have a look at it tomorrow.
Edit:
Back again: Windows will not recognize the Linux partitions - they are just "Simple Basic Healthy Primary Partitions".
What you can do is to right-click on any of those boxes and shrink the volum. making space for Linux.
Or you can create a lot of FAT partitions and handle them with Gparted (in Partition Magic) later. The best thing is to do it all , except the shrinking, with Gparted.

Ah, I got it now, but don't have it to upload to you because I'm not on the netbook ATM. I went about it a different way. I'll post the screenies later when they're uploaded.

Now, Anaconda thinks I got a bad block on the drive, and Arch is on the way soon as I can get going again.

Thanks.

The version of Windows for the netbook, Windows 7 Starter edition, has a lot of things different from the standard Windows 7 or Pro editions. One of them being, that the options aren't as clear for Disk Management (the other one, and this pissing me off, that I can't personalize the desktop).

Did a bit of investigating. What one does in there, so they can see what they're doing in Disk Management in Windows Starter, is first click on the partition in the middle that you want to modify, then on the right under "Disk Management", click "More Options", and there will be the option to Shrink Volume:



Now, once you do that, it will go through the querying process of the volume, that should look familiar to you:



The real pisser to me doing it the Windbloze way, was I couldn't figure why it wasn't giving me more space than it was to shrink by, so I "opted out" and cancelled, and will be using gparted, which I thought had downloaded on Saturday, but didn't. I've got it now, by gods. This was on a freshly scandisked and defragged drive, so there was nothing at the end of it that could have accounted for this:



Look at how little Windows space I've used, and how big of a drive this is, and tell me it couldn't have given me more space to use:



^^Dat's some b.s. right there. I will never trust a Windows function like this again. I will sing nothing but negative odes to Microcrap Windows for the rest of my life.

Maybe giving smartdefrag a go can help.
I would go for gparted and leave Windows used + 30%, for Windows.

Well, that's what I did, loaded gparted with unetbootin, and it's showing the partition with a lock by it, and the option to resize is grayed out. I'm assuming it's because gparted itself is on the same partition, but can't tell for sure if that's it or not.

I did try to umount the partition, but it said it couldn't because the device is busy. I guess I'll clear everything off my flash stick and try it there, but I've tried it once, and couldn't get this thing to boot from usb.

Back to the drawing board... *sigh.

That are what it were, the fact that it was installed to the hard drive. Cleared off my flash stick, had unetbootin install gparted live to it, and it happily shrunk windows to 87.89 GB.

Thanks, all, I think I got it from here.

Linux Now.