according to installation guide, I should shrink a windows partition in order to make room for opensuse, so I shrunk D entirely (I want opensuse to have half the HDD) and now there was 465.75 GB of unallocated space …then I tried to install opensuse.
on the partitioning stage of the installer, no partitions were suggested, also when trying to partition it myself to three partitions: root, home and swap. but the installer did not detect the unallocated space, so I went back and returned my HDD to it’s original state with three partitions, and tried to install opensuse again, there were no partitioning suggestions as well, and the installer did detect all three partitions … but it won’t allow any resize, edit or deleting moves.
I noticed that all the partitions on the installer were labeled “linux native”
Why is this happening and how can I partition my HDD properly in order to install opensuse side by side with Windows?
Also, can anyone suggest a proper partitioning for my HDD?
I think we have all just been invited to a nude party
It’s hard to know what’s going wrong. There’s probably an important detail that you have missed.
Please provide the output from:
# fdisk -l /dev/sda
This assumes that your disk is “/dev/sda”. You will need to be root for that (or use “sudo”). Put the output in a code block. You can use the “#” symbol for the code block. After entering the data, select with the mouse then click the “#”
You would need to shrink the main Windows OS partition. But!
First backup important files and then defrag it.
Use the Windows Partition manager to shrink the partition, no more than 50% of the free space (I always use Gparted, and never an issue, but the official method is use Windows).
Once you have free space
I would get a live cd of Gparted and create an extended partition to fill the free space and then create your logical partitions for openSUSE:
swap 2 x RAM
ext4 for root no more than 30GB
ext4 for home all the remaining free space
I suspect you may have the figures wrong
Unless D is a backup type storage partition
That would make C the OS, which makes sense as it is marked as Boot too
Also good to know if the machine is and old BIOS or EFI type
Also you said you shrank the D drive partition you probably should delete it rather then shrink it. But we do need more detail on how the disk is really partitioned and unfortunately Window lies about it
I tried to use Gparted as suggested, but it froze at the first menu it displayed. I looked around and apparently it’s a bug that usually pops up on Acer Aspire machines. Talk about tough luck :\
Tried that as well, openSuse installer is just not able to detect that there’s an unallocated space on the HDD and wont let me resize any already detected partitions.
According to this, you don’t have any unallocated space on your drive. The D partition is empty of data, but it is still allocated as an NTFS Primary partition.
Just use the Disk Management to unmount and unassign D, then delete the partition. Do not remake the partition. It will now show as unallocated space, and you can then go ahead with your install.
I know, this is the initial state of the HDD as described in my original post. I deleted D before I started the installation (it said unallocated), but the openSuse installer didn’t detect the unallocated space. It only listed the two partitions (100 MB and the 465 GB) and wasn’t allowing any resizing or manipulation on these partitions.
Okay, then invoke Disk Manager now and show the current state that it shows. The way you posted that, you seemed to be saying that is what Disk Manager shows now.
I think the partitioner does not like the fact that partition 1 begins at sector 1. It wants it to begin later.
You can probably add partitions with “fdisk” and then use them in the install. Boot a live CD or DVD, and run “fdisk” to create the partitioning that you want.
The usual advice would be 20G for a root partition, maybe 4G or so for swap, and the rest for “/home”. If you want all three of those partitions, then you will need to first add an external partition and put some logical drives in the external partition.
Not sure why you want to resize the windows partition. If you want that do it from windows
It is odd that the partitions take up most of the first track. Normally the first track is left empty. In fact there are some semi common Windows programs that use sections of the first track. So I don’t understand that???
Did you try to simply install what is the partition scheme suggested by the installer. It should suggest an extended partition and 3 others swap/root/home
I suggest you not install grub2 to the MBR but to the root partition and set the boot flag to that partition
Note that the installer does not explicitly show unused space it is inferred from the size of the drive less the shown partitions
It may be that the installer will choke on the odd start of the partitions anyway.
On Wed 09 Apr 2014 09:06:01 PM CDT, gogalthorp wrote:
Not sure why you want to resize the windows partition. If you want that
do it from windows
Hi
I’ve got one of my test laptops (Compaq CQ56) here running windows 7,
turning all the carp off, defragmenting and still windows would only
shrink it to 150GB. Fired up the openSUSE 13.1 rescue usb and used
gparted to shrink it to 100GB, restarted windows and it ran through
it’s hard disk check and boots up fine… I should have just prepared
the partitions first and installed windows via a custom install to
select the partition…
–
Cheers Malcolm °¿° SUSE Knowledge Partner (Linux Counter #276890)
openSUSE 13.1 (Bottle) (x86_64) GNOME 3.10.1 Kernel 3.11.10-7-desktop
If you find this post helpful and are logged into the web interface,
please show your appreciation and click on the star below… Thanks!
Not in my experience. If “fdisk” gives any warning or error message, you can quit without saving the changes. Hmm, it will probably tell you that some partitions are not properly aligned.
I suggest you at least do a trial run. You can quit without saving any changes.
On 2014-04-09 23:06, gogalthorp wrote:
> Did you try to simply install what is the partition scheme suggested by
> the installer. It should suggest an extended partition and 3 others
> swap/root/home
AFAIK, it suggest nothing, it breaks out with an error.
–
Cheers / Saludos,
Carlos E. R.
(from 13.1 x86_64 “Bottle” at Telcontar)
