Need Help with Partitioning for dual boot

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1

I am looking for help setting up my LG Laptop, currently running Windows 7, to dual boot with openSUSE.

I want to start learning Linux and figure the best way is to install a distro and experiment with it. However, I’ve been having trouble getting Linux on my system without wiping out Windows, and need help.

My current partition setup is as follows. I have a separate partition for my documents. Only Windows and programs are on the first one.

1.5GB OEM | 120GB Windows 7 | ~170GB Files | 10GB OEM

I figured I would shrink the Windows partition by 20 GB and install Linux there. I don’t plan on having many files or anything associated with Linux.

I used Windows 7 disk management to shrink the drive to 100 GB, leaving 20 GB of unallocated space, then restarted to the openSUSE CD. When I got to the part where you setup the hard drive, it presented me with the following suggested partitioning:

“-Delete Windows partition /dev/sda2 (100GB), Resize impossible due to inconsistent fs. Try checking fs under windows.
-Delete Windows partition /dev/sda3 (170GB), Resize impossible due to inconsistent fs. Try checking fs under windows.
…”
and then a couple more bullets, listing how it will create new partitions for Linux. I don’t want to get rid of Windows though. I was hoping that at this point it would have an option something like: ‘use largest section of free space’.

I then figured I would have to specify it manually. I went into “Create Partition Setup” and then selected the first option, ‘my hard drive’. I could then see the hard drive partitions as they were, including unallocated space. I tried selecting the empty 20 GB and clicking next. But it gave me this message:

“The current selection is invalid: Too few partitions are marked for removal or the disk is too small. To install Linux, select more partitions to remove or select a larger disk.”

I thought this was kinda weird at first, but then figured it made sense if the installer expected to see an already formated partition. If I select the 170 GB partition, it doesn’t give the message, but first wants to delete it. So I decided I needed to use Windows to create a partition out of the empty space. I excited out of the openSUSE installer and went to Window’s disk management again.

I selected the empty space and selected ‘New Simple Volume’. I tried formating in both NTFS and FAT 32, but
either way, I get the message:

“The operation you selected will convert the selected basic disk(s) to dynamic disk(s). If you convert the disk(s) to dynamic, you will not be able to start installed operating systems from any volume on the disk(s) (except the current boot volume) Do you wish to continue?”

At this point, I was somewhat confused. I then decided to try installing Kubuntu to see if that would work easier.

During the Kubuntu installation, the default option for disk formating was to erase and use the whole disk. When I went to “specify partitions manually”, I chose the unallocated space. I got the message:

“No root file system is defined. Please correct this from the partitioning menu.”

If I click on “New Partition Table”, it says “… all partitions will be removed…”. And I couldn’t find anywhere else to do what I want.

And that leads me here. Answers to any of these questions would help:

Anybody know what the problem is and what I should do to fix it?
Why does Windows want to switch to a dynamic disk to create the 20 GB partition?
Is my understanding that a dynamic disk won’t work for me correct?

Any help would be appreciated. I have done tons of searching through Google and forums and haven’t come up with much.

Cameron

2

Cameron, I wish I could help. But I’m having similar (actually much worse) problems. See long series of posts under this topic in same forum:

“Dual boot tutorial? Adding SuSE 11.0 to Windows 7”

Maybe something in there will help you.

Good luck!
socref

3

well, i cannot help you with the windows embedded partition mgr (it kind of doesn’t like to partition for other os), but you can choose the partition where to install linux on your hdd with the install disk … takes some tweaking, but it’s manageable …
–choose the partition you’d like to shrink
–choose rezise
–then format the new space as ext3 and mount
–choose that partition as target medium for your linux distro

there’s another way to prepare your hdd for a linux installation, and that is investing in an external partition mgr program, like that from PARAGON Software Group - partition manager, drive backup, hard disk partitioning … cost you about 20-40 bucks (depending what version you choose), but then you’ll have no issues shrinking the windows 7 partition by creating and formatting (linux ext3) a new one … then the installation will find the linux partition and install the distro there … hope this helps …if you want more info on the partition manager embedded in the install media, skype or e-mail me … theo

4

Please understand you can only have 4 primary partitions,looking at your post I suspect all 4 are already created. If so What is required here is to use one of those primary partition to create an extended partition, Inside that extended partition you can create logical partitions to install linux.This wil mean copying or imaging one of these partitions and then deleting that partition so you can create the required extended partition as one your 4 primary partitions.

5

I knew that a HDD could only have 4 primary partitions. I know that the two larger partitions on my hard drive (the one for Windows and the one for my data) are primary, but I didn’t figure the OEM ones would be. Although this would explain my issue. I’ve tried making an extended partition but can’t find out how to using Windows. I’ve done more searching and read somewhere that a 3rd party partitioning tool is required for extended partitions.

I’m going to try topit’s suggestion. If I can’t get that to work, I’ll look into using a 3rd party partitioner.

Thank’s for both of your suggestions.

I’m still curious though why the Linux installer can’t just put itself in empty space. If anyone else has ideas or suggestions, please put them down. I will update my progress as it happens and post a message when I have it all working.

6

I should add you can then then copy or image the data from the previously deleted partition to a new logical partition.Just take care in choosing the partition to play with!

7

Hi Cameron,

You have not mentioned which version of openSuse you are installing, but let me try to give you some steps to what I performed on my cousin’s laptop.

  1. Shrink the windows partition to get some free space to be used for Linux
  2. In the Linux installation for the disk setup choose specify partitions manually depending on which version you are using.
  3. Define the partitions as needed with the mount points of Boot, Swap and Root.
  4. Then choose next you should not get the issue of it changing the drive etc once you have done this.

Hope that helps.

8

Free space by its self can not be used to create a partition if all primary’s are used. This is a partitioning thing not a linux thing.

Do give parted magic a go or gparted, please!

9

I should clarify, the previously mentioned apps are available as live cd’s and this is the way to use them.Also it seems to have recently become common for pre installed windows systems to use all primary partitions.

Neat trick hey?

10

Output from “fdisk -l” as root (minus quotation marks) would be handy here!

11

Maybe these will help
Custom Install.mpeg.rar - Windows Live

Default Install.mpeg.rar - Windows Live

11.2 Slideshow Images - Windows Live

Partitioning - Windows Live

12

Hi Cameron,

First of all, if all you want is to learn Linux, I would recommend installing a program called VirtualBox. This program emulates a computer (virtual machine) in which you can install Linux as if it were on a real computer. You can create as many virtual machines as you like and install all Linux distros that way. A virtual machine is not as powerfull as a real computer but it works amazing well. Many Linux users run Windows in a virtual machine, since VirtualBox host is available for Windows, Linux and Mac OSX.

Now to the hard work! I have a slightly different approach and method. As for partitioning, I never trust any OS setup, even openSUSE, which is by far the better Linux setup of all times. I’m no being politically correct by saying that. The concept of a userfriendly and featureful Linux setup was invented years ago by a small german company called SuSE (Notice that it was written differently).

Here’s my method. BTW, socref, with this method you wouldn’t probably have screwed up your Windows.
Take a cup of coffee and a sheet of paper and think about what you want to do: how many operating systems, how many diskspace you need. How do you want to install Linux ? In how many partions ? Do you want just a /, /home and swap - as most people would advice here … or do you want a separate /usr and /var ? Maybe a separate /usr/local and /boot ? There are many possibilities and the one you choose doesn’t matter. What matters is that you decide now and not later in the setup when you will be offered choices that you won’t understand and end up at some point clicking the wrong button.

Once you know how many partitions you need and the size and filesystem of each, don’t run Linux, don’t run Windows, don’t run Unix or whatever OS you can think of! Instead run a good partitioning program and resize/create the partitions you need! As if you would build a house, build the foundations first. Many people recommend Parted Magic. I would assume that they know what they are talking about and that that program will do a good job. I personally use the old DOS Partition Magic (for historical reasons) but I’m sure Parted Magic does the same just better (it’s getting more an more impossible to boot DOS on modern computers anyway). Formating the partitions at that point is only relevant in order to provide them with the correct partition ID (whether it’s FAT, NTFS, EXT3/4 or swap). You will reformat the partitions while installing the Operating systems. I had a good reason to use a partitioner rather than an OS setup : each fdisk (whether Windows, Linux or Unix fdisk) has its own idea of what partitions geometry should be. At the end it comes up to the same but the small differences in the way of numbering starting and ending sectors can be extremely confusing to us and present a potential risk. The rule is : never use different fdisks !

Once you have resized your Windows partition(s) and created your Linux partitions, run Linux setup! Never let it resize shrink or organize partitions for you! You’re the boss after all. Never choose ‘edit partition setup’ (or whatever it’s called)! Always choose ‘create partition setup’ and expert mode. What’s so difficult that would require to be an expert ? Nothing. On the contrary: it’s much better than having to answer questions like : "Do you want to shrink this or do you want to erase that . Brrr … I guess I would just feel like to destroy everything in such a situation. You already have your partitions. There is nothing to move, nothing to shrink, nothing to resize and nothing to worry about. Just pick the partitions one by one, the one you have prepared for swap, the one you have dedicated for /, /home, etc, choose the filesystem (normally either ext3 or ext4, or swap), the mountpoints. OpenSUSE has a combo box ready where you will just select the correct ones. You can do nothing wrong. Install Grub, the Linux bootmanager either in MBR or in the Linux root partition. It should automatically add an entry to boot Windows. If it does not, you will ask later in this forum “Where is my Windows?” and we’ll help you getting it back.

Sorry, I saw several answers came meanwhile, but it took me some time to write this post.

13

Nicely put,I always view partitioning as a separate operation to installing, And always use the same tool.Where you mention a potential risk, I can vouch for the fact that it is not only a potential risk but a very real one. I got caught mixing a commercial partitioner and an open source partitioner on the same disk. It is as you have mentioned ,And in fact I would have been able to recover the partition if I understood what had occurred.I did not understand,It cost me.

My advice! Pick your partitioning software and stick with it.

14

I just didn’t want to frighten anybody. :wink:

15

I usually run a minimum of three operating systems on this machine.Things can get messy if care is not taken with partitoining.Probably not that frightening for most,at least I hope not.

16

Thank’s to everyone for all of your replies. For the record, I’m trying to Install openSUSE 11.2. But like I said, I’m really just looking for Linux (and I think I’ll prefer KDE to Gnome).

I ran Parted Magic to try and create an extended partition. When I tried to create a new partition in unallocated space, it told me I couldn’t have more than 4 primary partitions. This answers the question as to whether the two OEM partitions are primary or not. And now that I think about it, this problem explains all of the symptoms I was having. Solution: I need and extended partition.

Thank you for your very good post please_try_again. I like your thinking about partitioning seperately.

I have heard of and looked into virtual machines, but figured a dual boot was better for me. I like the idea of having an actual Linux OS installed on my computer that I configure for neworking etc without having to worry about doing it through a virtual machine. I also figured it would be easier to actually install to hard disk instead of figuring out how to use a virtual machine. And lastly, it will be very nice to have a second OS on the HDD just in case Windows crashes fatally. What are the advantages to using a virtual machine? The only one I can think of is that you don’t have to mess with your hard drive. And using me as an example, that might be a considerably large advantage.

As far as partitioning goes, I’ve used the Windows partitioner before (to seperate my data from Windows) and felt comfortable with it. I didn’t see any reason to use anything else. I burnt and ran Parted Magic though, so I can use that from now on. I was surprised though that it loaded a Linux-like destop. The average person in the Windows world has no idea what other stuff is out there (bootable CD’s, dual boot, virtual machines etc… )

I didn’t worry too much about how I would setup Linux. I figured I could give it 25 GB of empty space and let it tell me what it wanted where. I expected to put in 20 GB for the OS, 1 GB for swap, and 4 GB for home.

So I now plan on changing one of my primary partitions into an extended partition, using Parted Magic. Firstly, is there any issue doing this since all of my partitioning before has been done with Windows (you guys mentioned using one partitioner. Should I stick with Windows’ built in one?). Next question: Can I install all of Linux onto an extended partition, splitting up the OS, home, and swap using logical drives? And is there any issue having my Windows files on another logical drive in the extended partition? In other words, can I treat logical drives like individual partitions?

I’ve Googled it, but I didn’t find much: does the extended partition have to be the last one? Recap of my setup:

1.5 GB OEM | 120 GB Windows 7 | ~170 GB Data | 10 GB OEM

Can I erase the 170 GB partition, then created an extended partition in it’s place? Or do I need to erase the 10 GB OEM? This question is also circular in that I would prefer to use erase the 10 GB OEM partition to make the extended partition. Can I? I don’t see what could be on it. It shows up as 100% free in Windows disk management (so does the 1.5 GB partition, but I feel that one is important)

I got my computer with Windows Vista. It had LG software to back up the OS within the hard drive (LG Smart Recovery). I assume that’s what this 10 GB partition was for. I used it then, but after I got shipped the Windows 7 upgrade (which was promised when I bought the computer. And on a side note; it took forever to come. longer than the promised 4 weeks after Windows 7 release), I never bothered installing or using LG Smart Recovery. I assume that the 10 GB is now empty, but am worried it’s not and has something important. I’ll probably end up calling LG since I can’t find anything on the internet, only people wanting to “delete undeletable partitions”.

I plan on creating the partitions and installing Linux this weekend, if I can get all the details figured out before then.

Thanks for all of the help, I am definitely making progress. Any answers to the new questions though?

Thanks,

Cameron

17

I think it was asked for before, from a Roxterm in Parted Magic give us:

fdisk -l

Our offering advice before seeing this would be foolhardy.

18

Ok. here you go:

Disk /dev/sda: 320.1 GB, 320072933376 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 38913 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x9512b8f5

…Device Boot…Start…End…Blocks…Id…System
/dev/sda1…1…196…1572864…12…Compaq diagnostics
/dev/sda2…*…196…15861…125828096…7…HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda3…15861…34344…148461312…7…HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda4…37608…38914…10486784…12…Compaq diagnostics

Although it was a pain getting it to come out readable. The forum removes extra spaces, so I had to use .'s.

19

You need to do some analysis - use parted magic to mount the partitions and see what is in each.
Actually if you are clever you could open them all across the desktop and take a screen, so we can see it all.
You need to delete on of them and possibly even shrink the windows install partition, then get an extended out of all the free space.

An even better approach is delete windows entirely;)

20

The advantage to me in running a VM is I have both OS running at the same time. :wink: But in my case I run Windows inside Suse. Even though I have been doing this kind of thing for 3+ years I still get a kick in seeing Windows open in a KDE window on my desktop. I can copy and past between the OS’s and I can connect via the local net just like I was running two machines. It allows much more flexibility. The down side is if you want to run cutting edge Windows games the 3D drivers are not quite up to the same kind of response as real hardware. But you can run all the Windows buisness software you want, does fine.

You would have to buy a real Windows disk The Windows “repair” stuff will not install in a VM