I need to install openSUSE LEAP 15 on a laptop with windows 7. I did a defrag, but the free space is not at the end of the volume. How do I close whatever files are at the end of the volume, e.g., hibernation, paging, so that defrag can move them and I can shrink the volume prior to the Linux install?
The laptop isn’t mine, so blowing away windoze is not an option
As far as I know, the best way is to turn off hibernation and paging. Then use the Windows software to shrink the partition. And then turn paging an hibernation back on.
How do I turn them offf and on in windows ?
Oops! how dangerous is it to ask Windows help in a Linux forum? rotfl!
Perhaps better off to ask this type of question here:
https://forum.thewindowsclub.com/
Install OpenSUSE 15.0 onto a 32gb USB flash drive - it will be as fast as most hard drives and no need to get rid of Windows & on the hard drive.
I have done this on many older Dell laptops that have old hard disk or no hard disk at all.
I partition that Flash drive with a 128 Mb EFI partition - then all but 4gb for root and the last 4bg for swap - all ext4 - that seems to be the best for a flash drive.
If your laptop does not require UEFI boot you don’t need the 128mb EFI partition.
You can use an OpenSUSE recovery image and gparted to set up the flash drive or use a manual partition in the installer.
There is no need to put multiple file systems for /boot /var /usr /tmp /home /opt - that was done back when the large disks were 20MB. It seems silly to do that with multiple GB storage that has been available for the last 10 years. Veritas file system (in OpenSUSE we call that Logical Volume Manager LVM) was created to glue multiple disks to look like one giant drive - then they added mirroring. Technically it really is only needed today to mirror disks - few people need drives bigger than the drives we can buy today. Business still might need more than an 8 gb drive.