New Install 10.3 On Hp Pavilion Media Center Dv6617ed

I just got new notebook HP Pavilion Media Center dv6617ed Entertainment.
I want to install Suse 10.3 when leaving Vista intact.

I have run QTparted from live CD Knoppix 5.0 and I have seen that there are two partitions on the hard drive. One small backup partition and big NTFS partition about 108GB. QTparted was not able to see what was the used space on this partition.

First I want to shrink the big partition to 30GB and than on the free space to create two new partitions ext3 30GB and FAT32 about 50GB.

Now the questions:
The first question is if QT parted is not able to see the used space on the partition is it not danger to shrink the partition? If it is not danger are 30 GB enough for Vista?

What is better to use for partitioning - the SUSE installer or QTparted from live CD?

And some more advice for to avoid Murphy's laws?
Thanks in advance.

And some more advice for to avoid Murphy's laws?[/b]

I would suggest using defrag, before resizing Windows partition

I had a similar situation, and I used some software that runs under Windows, to resize the partition. It remembered the settings (i.e. new partition size, etc.), then rebooted the system and changed partitions size before Windows started. Then I used SuSE installer, to make ext3 partitions on the unused space. For me, it seemed the most suitable way. But unfortunately, I can't remember the name of the software I used, but I guess it was Paragon Hard Disk Manager, or Partition Magic, or something like that

First I want to shrink the big partition to 30GB and than on the free space to create two new partitions ext3 30GB and FAT32 about 50GB.[/b]

My preference, when it comes to partitioning hard drives, is to use Gparted live CD, or use Parted Magic live CD:

Gparted: http://gparted.sourceforge.net/livecd.php
Parted Magic: http://partedmagic.com/wiki/PartedMagic.php

Make certain you:
a. backup before you do any partitioning, and
b. immediately prior to partitioning, defrag your Windows partitions.

You expressed a view to create only 1 x 30 GByte ext3. Note that many of us (and also openSUSE installer by default) will try to create 3 partitions for Linux. It will create a / (root) partition and create a /home partition (for your users data) and create a very small swap partition (typically 1 to 2 GBytes with a new PC). When you run the openSUSE installer, per Murphy's law, it might (hopefully) see your 30GByte ext3 and offer to install all 3 Linux partitions there, or it might get greedy and try to steal space from your Vista 30GB partition, or try steal space from your new FAT32 50 GB partition. Be on the alert for that, and be prepared to go into expert mode to correct, if openSUSE installer gets greedy.

There are good reasons for a separate /home partition. In essence it makes doing a "clean" install very easy to do, as the /home is not touched if one is careful (only the / is touched during a careful re-install or update of openSUSE Linux), and thus one keeps their desktop and custom settings (such as emails, bookmarks, etc ... ) for new openSUSE installations.

And also, ... reference your planned 50GByte FAT32, you could give some thought to making that a NTFS format instead. The new linux NTFS-3G driver is working well for read/write access to NTFS partitions (unlike the older linux NTFS driver), so you will be able to read and write to an NTFS from linux. Now you may need to custom edit your /etc/fstab file after Linux installation (to setup the NTFS-3G driver), but thats easy to do, and there are many people on this forum who can walk you through that simple edit.

The advantage of NTFS, is if you wish to keep open the possibility of using large files ( > 2 GBytes) interchangeably between Linux and Vista, and if you think your 30GByte Vista will expand such that you can not use that partition (for the >2GByte files), then having the new 50GByte as an NTFS format could come in handy. Many DVDs can be > 2 GBytes, and if you are doing custom home video editing, then its easy to exceed the 2 GByte file limitation associated with FAT32.

Good luck.

with vista you must be careful because it is more of a pain to dual boot. you must shrink the windows partition from a windows program. to get a dual boot you should also use vistabootpro. since otherwise vista won't boot. it's a lot more tricky than dual booting vista, suse could shrink xp drive easy and install and it would work. vista is unfortunately not that simple. there are many how to's around, if you get stuck, post again before trying, and as oldcpu said, back up all data!

ross.

I would definitely use the Vista partitioner for this (the best app to come with Vista). Simply shrink the Vista partition, leaving unallocated space for your SUSE install. After this, Yast worked fine for me, setting up grub for a "normal" dual boot (without vistabootpro). You may have trouble gaining sufficient free space - Vista can lock system files in place toward the end of its partition, but there is a way of recovering this also. Regards...

Thanks for all advices.

I will try shrinking with vista integrated partitioner and then with SUSE installer. I did not know that such thing like vista partitioner exist. Than hopefully all will be fine. If not I will ask again for help.

Brief description of the installation.

Defragmenting with JkDefrag looks to me faster then buid in defragmentor. Strange is that Vista will not show any percentage or some sort of info how long defrag will last.

Vista has it's own partitioner but it supports only NTFS and FAT32. The minimum partition size I could reach was 60 GB of the main Vista partition and than I made two partitions of 20 GB each.

I have installed vistabootpro but during the Suse installation GRUB was installed and I don't know if vistabootpro have had some role, I suppose not.

Now I have GRUB with boot options
Suse 10.3
Windows 1 (Vista)
Windows 2 (Vista rcovery)
Suse failsafe

Like always Suse was great so far.

Well done. Have fun...

I have a HPdv9572EA multimedia laptop. This came with 2 HDs and Vista installed. On the primary drive was the hidden HP back up partition, Vista and the MBR. The second (D drive was clean. I shrank the Vista partition on the primary drive and created a new FAT32 partition on this drive. I then repartitioned the secondary (D drive into Linux swap, Ext3 and another FAT32 partition. Then I installed openSUSE, which was a snap. So now I have a dual boot system with two OSs on separate drives. Each OS can read/write to the other drive and I have a bi-directional back-up for all my personal/critical data based on FAT32. The Vista partitioning tools are OK except that you can't create Linux partitions. I used Acronis Disk Director, which is a fabulous tool.

Have a dv9700 with similar setup. Because E: is empty, Yast installer did the trick - delete the partition and reformat as ext3, without touching C: (apart from Grub in the MBR). No need for extra hard disk managers.

However, if you have only one disk and your setup requires you to shrink C: I strongly recommend you use the Vista partition manager for this part of the install.

My partitions are NTFS and ext3. NTFS-3g (SUSE) reads/writes NTFS, Ext2IFS_1_11 (Vista) reads/writes ext3. No need for FAT32 and its file size limits.

Regards...

By the way winxp_escapee, did you install the webcam kernel driver (uvcvideo) and did it bork usb mass storage? There is a conflict between the two on my dv9700.