Re: Planning a new Debian box!

[Joel Roth <joelz@pobox.com>]

Bob Bernstein wrote:
> Shortly I will become the owner of a refurbished Dell with Win7 already on
> its 160g sata hard drive.
> 
> I have no need or use for a multi-OS multi-boot machine. I only want wheezy
> on this for now.
> 
> Question: can I entrust to the Debian installer the task of repartitioning
> and formatting the HD with all that Windoze cruft already on it?

If you delete all the windows partitions, create new
partition(s), install Debian and install a new boot loader, 
you should get no problems from windows.

Last time I bought a notebook, I decided to keep Windows 7
around for diagnostic purposes.  I found that Partition
Wizard[1] Live CD by Minitool, can handle all of the issues in
shrinking a windows partition to create space for another
OS.

This was much easier than the windows partition resizing
tool, which is trickly, limited and awkward as hell.

Cheers
 
> Or, are there steps I ought to take prior to launching the installer,
> perhaps involving other disk tools? I don't trust what M$ puts on hard
> drives!

1.  http://www.partitionwizard.com/free-partition-manager.html
 
> TIA Debian peeps!
-- 
Joel Roth