Last week I put together a Windows 8 PC from parts, and this week I made it dual-boot with OpenSUSE 12.2. (Intel G2120, 8 GB DDR 3, integrated graphics, KDE 4.7)
Here’s how my primary 1 TB hard drive looks in the YaST2 Expert Partitioner:
/dev/sda 931.51 GB Hitachi HDS72101
/dev/sda1 350.00 MB HTFS/NTFS NTFS System Reserved
/dev/sda2 373.31 GB HTFS/NTFS NTFS /media/EOEA4FB6EA4F882C
/dev/sda3 558.76 GB Extended
/dev/sda5 2.00 GB Linux swap Swap
/dev/sda6 20.00 GB Linux native Ext4
/dev/sda7 100.00 GB Linux native Ext4
When I initially loaded OpenSUSE, I deliberately made sda7 smaller than the maximum allowed in hopes that most of the physical drive could remain NTFS. However, the install grabbed the above 558.76 GB for the extended Linux area, and I didn’t see how to lower it. As a result, it seems that around 436 GB is wasted and unavailable. I see how to use the Expert Partitioner to increase sda7 from 100.00 GB to 535.84 GB. But I don’t see how to instead give the 435.84 GB back to Windows, since my largely empty sda3 is not resizeable in the Partitioner.
It can be asked why I care. Perhaps I could install Ext2Fsd as a Windows service, and use the Linux areas in Windows just as if NTFS. Depending on how this thread goes, maybe I will. But might there be a performance issue? And when I eventually use the Windows 8 “Storage Spaces” feature (poor man’s RAID), I doubt being able to get that to include ext4 space.
Any and all ideas (other than deleting Windows 8!) will be welcome.
AFAIK Windows should see the extended partition. It’s not the partitions it can’t handle, it’s the filesystems on the partitions it can’t deal with. IMHO Windows should see “Empty space” in the disk manager, where you could create another NTFS partition, to be mounted on whatever driveletter (horrrrr) Windows will allow you to mount it on.
Be Careful running the Windows Partition Editor after you have installed openSUSE. In general, I can’t suggest that you do that.
openSUSE can read and write NTFS partitions, but it can’t create them. I suggest you use the YaST Partitioner to create a Logical FAT Partition Type for Windows and openSUSE to read if you want.
I can’t recommend using Windows to write to a common Linux Partition type with any such Utility. Your best bet is to stick with a Windows created NTFS (made before you install openSUSE) or use an openSUSE created FAT partition type ONLY.
In more than one case, the Windows Partition program has been found to blow up a Linux configuration, so please don’t run it now and consider using a common FAT partition you could make with openSUSE.
Red flag in front of bull – although I don’t believe I went against given advice.
What I did do was to burn an ISO CD with GParted, and boot from it. First step was to take the wasted space out of the extended partition, and the next was to create a new NTFS partition of the desired size. Results look as desired.
I’m doing this kind of thing now, when my PC is new, so that if I do have to start over, it won’t be going back far.
Obviously the GParted disk worked OK for you and was a good choice over doing the same with Windows. I use openSUSE and Windows in a dual boot and openSUSE always worked great reading and writing to a NTFS partition. Here is some more good advice, after openSUSE is running, consider doing an edit of your /etc/fstab file as root. On the real drives entry there above the /proc ones and such, I suggest you place all shown disk partitions into disk order as determined by the YaST Partitioner. If you have only one disk, just place the partitions in numerical order from part1 to part(last). For all NTFS Partitions, I use the defaults setting and add just noatime. And I add noatime to the end of every real partition option shown. Have a look at my Windows partition to get an idea of what I am talking about.
The defaults setting for NTFS gives read/write permissions to all system users. The noatime option works on all entries when I put it at the end and it says to “Don’t update inode access times on the file system. Which Can help disk performance”. That just means if the only thing your Kernel file system does is to read from a file, don’t update the recorded access time of that single read which adds unnecessary writes to a disk and its the recommended method to use on any SSD. For those write tasks to system files as root, have a look at my bash script here:
I apologize for putting off replying to your carefully written post. I guess that I couldn’t see why I should follow the recommendation. For one thing, I don’t have a solid state drive, and, once in a while I do want to see the last date/time read for a file. However, I’m sure there will be some future time I’ll greatly benefit from using SYSEdit.
It’s not evident to me that they are out of order, and I’m afraid it’s not yet even evident to me how to copy the YaST results into this post. Here’s what fdisk returns for my largest and primary hard drive:
Disk /dev/sda: 1000.2 GB, 1000204886016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 121601 cylinders, total 1953525168 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: 0x39e7c0d5
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 2048 718847 358400 7 HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
/dev/sda2 718848 783614491 391447822 7 HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
/dev/sda3 * 783616000 1039470591 127927296 f W95 Ext’d (LBA)
/dev/sda4 1039470592 1953523711 457026560 7 HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
/dev/sda5 783618048 787812351 2097152 82 Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sda6 787814400 829757439 20971520 83 Linux
/dev/sda7 829759488 1039470591 104855552 83 Linux
I don’t have a problem here I know of, so unless someone looks at the above in horror, it’s not essential to reply to this post. Thank you for ideas already given.
When I look at your setup, I don’t know there will be a problem. Having only 20 GB for the root partition could run out depending on how many applications you might install. My root partition stands at 18.1 GB used right now, but I did install all standard Desktops and I normally make root 60 GB or so. Your /home partition should be fine at 100 GB unless you try to store a lot of videos. As for anything else, there are reasons you might edit your /etc/fstab file to load faster. There are basic requirements for setting up openSUSE partitions you can read about here:
I have lots more that can help, but you need to want to learn or do more. If you are happy with your setup, then I am happy and glad to hear you have your openSUSE setup just as you want.