How to install on existing partition?

English Install/Boot/Login
#1

Hi all, my first post and yes I am a total noob when it comes to openSUSE or any Linux OS.

I would like to Install OpenSUSE on an existing partition and have my PC dual boot between Windows XP Home and OpenSUSE. Here is my Drive configuration.

I have 2 physical drives.

Drive 1
C: Windows XP Home

Drive 2
D: Data Storage
E: Empty

I would like to Install openSUSE 11 on this empty E: partition and not have it add, split or in any way change my existing partitions. But when I get to the point where the installer wants me to accept the partition it suggests I am totally lost.

Windows is fairly straight forward as it resides on one partition and just wants to know which partition I want it to install to. The multiple lines presented by the Open SUSE installer are completely foreign to me.

Can someone please help me understand this?

#2

AS mentioned there are physical drives and let say logical drives.
The physical drives are called in opensuse SDA, SDB,SDC and so on depending on how many HD you have.
SDA can divided in a lot partition (logical drives)
THEY are called SDA1, SDA2 , SDA3 and so on
If you like to go for a dual boot it can be done in two ways
As you already have divided SDA choice custom or expert option and tell opensuse to use a specific partition of SDA , or tell her to use SDB the other hard drive
Than come GRUB.
GHRUB stand for Grand Unified Bootloader
IF you can not boot from the second hard drive than you have no other choice than writing GRUB on the MBR of SDA.
Writing GRUB on SDA look for the line set mount point to windos c:/ or something like that
Hope this will help you
dobby9

#3

Read this
Partitioning/Install Guide - openSUSE Forums

Some basics:
Remember that in BIOS you can switch the boot order of your HD’s.

In your case the MBR of the XP drive has the boot info for XP, so ideally you want to keep that as is.

When installing Suse switch bot of HD’s to make your Data drive 1st. The Yast installer for Suse will offer you a proposal, ignore it and select create partition setup, then custom partitioning for experts only. (Remember Nothing is written yet, so don’t worry)

In the custom partitioner you should be able to identify your 2 drives and see their partitions. Click the XP partition and edit, (do not format is set by default - so leave that way) but in the lower right, enter mount point like this: /windows

Select your other drive and for the data part, do the same as with XP, but call the mount point: /data

N.B. you must use the / (you can use different names if you want)

Now partition the space you want to use for suse

You need 3 partitions -
see my guide
make / the first one. Make it a Primary partition

You should then make the remaining space - one complete logical partition
Then create a /home inside that logical partition - making it as large as you can, just leave enough room to have a ‘swap’ of about 512mb - 1GB

/
/home
are both ext3 format

Check the way Yast reads your HD’s, ie; sda, sdb

if your Data/suse drive is sda, then Grub needs to go to MBR of sda
I can’t stress this enough - DOUBLE CHECK

Accept - still nothing is written!

In the next proposal screen you can click on the bootloader, do so, and check that it is installing grub to the MBR not /boot