Installation of win7 after suse11.4

English Install/Boot/Login
1

Dear SUSE user,
I am a new user, and just installed and started to use the suse11.4 two weeks ago when my Win7 broke down. Now I got a new Win7 recovery disc from my laptop manufacturer, and want to install a Win7 accompanying with the suse11.4.
My question is how to clear up a free space in HD to install win7? Currently, I have 3 partitions that are sda1, sda2 and sda3 with space 2G(swap), 20G(root) and 270G(home) respectively. I want to free up half space from sda3 to install Win7, how to do it without delete the data on it? One weird thing is that my HD totally is 320G, but when I installed SUSE, only 300G was usable and the other 20G is missing until now. The fdisk -l command info. is showed below. Could you please give me some instructions. Thanks a lot!

**Disk /dev/sda: 320.1 GB, 320072933376 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 38913 cylinders, total 625142448 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x57f457f4
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 2048 4208639 2103296 7 HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
/dev/sda2 * 4208640 46153727 20972544 83 Linux
/dev/sda3 46153728 625141759 289494016 83 Linux
**

2

My advice
Backup what you need and start again. That partitioning is a mess and a recovery disc from a laptop manufacturer will probably not let you install except to the entire HD

3

Thanks for your reply. You are right.
I tried to install win7 but it failed, and told me some files can’t be copied. so I am wondering if I need format my hard disc to install the Win7 first. but by doing so, I will lose the suse11.4. Any suggestions?

4

Recovery disks vary greatly
They are not real install disks and so I can’t really say. Except, backup your personal files to an external HD or DVD/s.
You ought not rush this, and perhaps speak with your laptop vendor about what the recovery disk can do.

My guess is it will be limited.