Re: Installing debian, dual boot on 1 TB disk?
Hi Arief,
> Now I have another problem, how to move all this partition (and
> turn some of them into extended partitions) without destroying them.
> Guess I'll need to rediscover dd.
I've met a similar problem and it could be solved happily. You must have some understanding of partitioning.
http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/html_single/Partition/
First, it sounds like you have four primary partitions, with no extended partition among them: even if you shrink one, the resulting free space will be unusable because you can't create other partitions. In order to have more than four partitions, one of them *must* be extended: this allows you to create logical partitions into it.
> the partition scheme is more-or-less like this:
>
> 100M partition (hidden) - seems like a Windows-helper partition (I
> read something about it, forgotten now)
> 960 GB Windows partition
> 20GB Recovery partion
> 10M another part of recovery partition
The following is what, in my opinion, you should do:
1) First, make a backup of your partitions.
2) Delete the last two Windows recovery partitions and remember their sizes: you will re-create them later (you can't move around partitions, or turn a primary into an extended!).
2) Start your Debian installer.
3) Resize your Windows partition with Debian's partitioning tool: this will inform you about the minimum size the partition must be, according to the volume of Windows' data (but leave your partition larger than this).
4) Re-create, at the end of the disk, the partitions you deleted: they must be *logical* partitions (this automatically creates an extended partition).
5) In the free space left in between, create your Debian system, as usually. Your first Debian partition can be primary, the others must be logical. Finish the installation and install GRUB in your MBR.
6) Now you can dual-boot.
7) Re-create the NTFS filesystems of both new Windows partitions and restore data in them.
8) Read the partitioning HOWTO ;-)
Good luck,
Andrew
Reply to: