Partitioning a New Laptop

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1

Greetings, guys!
I just got a new HP laptop today. I’m planning to partition the hard drive to make it possible to install OpenSUSE on it next week.

I would like to know, before I even turn the machine on for the first time, what the recommended practice for partitioning the drive is.

Should I go ahead and turn it on and let Vista 64 get installed, set up and configured, then partition the drive, or should I partition the drive before running the initial startup wizard?

Since it’s an HP, I’m guessing that, as soon as I turn it on (without the gparted live disc inserted), it’s going to boot right into a set up wizard to unpack and install Vista. Should I have the drive already partitioned before I do that, or should I run through that process, then resize the partitions?

I plan to shrink the Windows partition to about 25 gigs, leave the recovery partition alone, then create a new partition for the OpenSUSE installation (about 25 gigs), a standard swap partition, then partition the rest of it for all of my files, etc. (mounting it as /home for OpenSUSE and using it for most of my documents, etc. within Windows).

My next question is; if I partition the main segment of the drive (my files partition) as NTFS, is is possible to mount that as /home? My main partition on my desktop is formatted as ext2, but Windows sometimes corrupts files when I move them back and forth to that drive. Therefore, with the progress Linux drivers have made with NTFS, I think I’d rather save most of my files on an NTFS partition, simply because Linux seems to work more effectively with NTFS than Windows does with ext2.

Any advice you can offer would be great. Thanks.

2

I can offer some advice. Though I suggest waiting for others too.
You need to get your laptop setup properly with Vista and all updated, there will be a bucket load, and you’ll need to be patient, the darn thing never stops re-booting.

Now I had Vista (but no more - it was just taking up valuable space - Yeah, that’s how much I think of it.) For me, I used Grub to boot my OS’s but Vista will not do Service Pack updates if you have a grub bootloader because it sees the Vista bootsector as corrupt. Grub booted Vista fine. But you might want to consider this: Download EasyBCD 1.7.2 - NeoSmart Technologies

Now, everything I have read says: Use the Vista partitioner to shrink the drive to free up space. I did not, it only offered a fraction of the available space. So I used the partitioner in Yast. Just remember before, to delete all temp files and rubbish and defrag in Vista.

If it’s possible to use NTFS as a /home (I don’t know) but you would have to create your partitions first with something like Parted Magic.
swap
/ (ext3)
/home (ntfs?)

Make yourself a set of recovery dvd’s once you have Vista up and running (If you don’t have them supplied). Just in case.

3

I had also Vista shipped with my laptop. When I decided to install opensuse along with vista, I formatted the hard disk, created partitions and inserted Vista backup disk which I had created. But the catch is, the disk will restore the system to factory settings, there is no other choice, at least there was none for me. All the partitioning was lost and Vista installed itself creating D drive of somewhat 5GB and all the rest was allocated to C. In D it also installed the Vista setup.

What I did next was, used “disk clean up” to free C of unnecessary files and de-fragmented it 1 or 2 times. I then inserted gparted live cd, deleted D, resized C to 35 GB and again partitioned the rest of the disk as per my requirement. And then Installed Suse.

Hope whatever I told will help you…

4

> And then Installed Suse.

and then installed SUSE knowing that if i EVER had a Vista problem
requiring a reinstall (nah, that could never happen, could it?) that
the Vista backup disk i had created was gonna WIPE OUT my SUSE, all of
its customizations, collected data, and etc and “All the partitioning
was lost and Vista installed itself creating D drive of somewhat 5GB
and all the rest was allocated to C. In D it also installed the Vista
setup.”

duh!

–
somebody_else

5

Somebody_else is always right :wink:

But this is a valid solution as well: Last week I had to buy a HP laptop for a friend. He wanted it from the shop of some other friend of his. This friend offered to remove Vista from the laptop per Gparted and reduce it’s price by € 100. That is a real solution !!

6

Knurpht wrote:
> Somebody_else is always right :wink:

not even close!

> reduce it’s price by € 100. That is a real solution !!

wow, that comes though NNTP as code…i wonder if he got a 100 Euro
discount…THAT is great!!!

–
somebody_else

7

Thanks for the replies, so far. I have gone ahead and started the computer and run the first-run wizard to get Vista installed. I am in the process of running the Windows Update tool to get all of the latest updates.

Once that process is completed, I will see what I can do to get the drive partitioned appropriately.

As far as my second question goes, does anyone have any insight into using NTFS for my files?

It’s been a long time since I’ve use SUSE (using Mint for my home computer).

Is SUSE capable of reading/writing NTFS, or is it still just possible to read?

If it can read/write, is it possible to mount an NTFS partition as /home/?

8

Is SUSE capable of reading/writing NTFS, or is it still just possible to read?

If it can read/write, is it possible to mount an NTFS partition as /home/?
openSUSE has no problem read/write to ntfs, though you have to edit fstab settings either at install or later to allow write.

I’m not sure I would go down the ntfs /home route, even if it was possible. I can’t see why it shouldn’t be though.

9

Try using the Vista partitioner. It will be safer from the Vista side.

There was an old trick that worked with XP that allows you to dual boot with the included XP menu, but I read somewhere that Microsoft changed the format, so now may not be possible to do that, unless you got an application for it.

Dual-Boot Linux and Windows 2000/Windows XP with GRUB HOWTO

10

About your second question, a separate /home partition using ntfs-3g filesystem should probably work.

11

Again, thanks for the info, so far.

Although this is an HP with an OEM version of Vista, it came with a Vista recovery disc, so I should be able to “recover” the Vista bootloader once I resize the partition.

The problems with using Vista’s partitioner are two-fold (at least):

  1. I don’t believe it will let you resize the system partition, since it will need to be in use while the partitioner is running
  2. It seems to have some weird limits on how much it will let you resize things. I tried to resize my external drive, and it would not let me make the main partition any smaller than half the size of the drive.

I’m going to try gparted, but I need to make sure I get a good back up of my current hard drive, first.

It seems that most of the information I’ve been able to find advises against trying to use NTFS-3G for my /home/ partition (due to all of the config files, etc. that need to be stored there).

I think I’ll just keep my /home/ partition on the main installation partition, but create a separate NTFS partition, mount it as /shared/ or something like that and use it to store the majority of my non-config files.

12

Correct.

Choosing an extra (small, few 100MB or 1GB should be more than enough) partition for /home, only using it for configs and storing all “non-config”-data on a shared partition might be better.

13

That’s probably what I’ll end up doing, Akoellh. Thanks for the advice.

I’m going to use the guide found at Using GParted to Resize Your Windows Vista Partition :: the How-To Geek to resize and repair my Vista partition once I get a newer version of gparted-live burned successfully (the working copy I have is 0.3.7, and it told me it couldn’t resize the partition; the copy I downloaded today was 0.5.4-2 and it won’t boot for me - so I’m trying to download 0.4.4-1 right now to see if I can get it burned, booting and resizing properly).

14

Parted magic works nice. Though I usually have to boot failsafe with it.

15

Thanks. I finally got gparted to boot properly. I’m in the middle of copying my Vista partition, but I realized shortly after applying the change that I really should be using clonezilla for that part of the process.

Since I’m copying a partition that’s ~300 gigs, who knows when gparted will finish so I can pop it out and try clonezilla, instead. I don’t dare stop it in the middle, as that’s how I killed my desktop when I tried this whole process (a few years ago, when Vista was still fairly new and no one really understood, yet, how the boot process had changed).

16

See you next week.
No, I don’t know, could be some time, several hours at least.

17

I hear you. I’m just hoping it’s done before I have to get up for work in the morning. Otherwise, I’m going to have to unplug and hope that my laptop battery lasts until I get to work. :wink:

18

I ended up getting gparted 0.5.4-2 to work properly. For some reason, I had to pop the CD in the drive just before the BIOS tried to read it.

I got the partition resized (after freeing up half of my hard drive space by deleting the system restore points) and got OpenSUSE installed without much trouble.

I ended up having to disable the “run fan whenever plugged into AC” or whatever that BIOS option is, but after that, OpenSUSE installed without much trouble.

I ended up being lucky, and didn’t even have to restore Vista. It launched right into the disk scan without me having to put the OS disc in or anything.

Once I get OpenSUSE configured, I will create my “files” partition with the extra 100-150 gigs left on the drive.

I ran the Gnome live disc installer, but I’m thinking of reinstalling over top of that with the full installation disc. For some reason the live disc doesn’t seem to have any of the SUSE-specific artwork (like the menu icon, etc.). I also seem to have installed the wrong nvidia drivers for my card, so I have to repair the installation anyway. I’ll make a separate post for the questions associated with that in the appropriate board, though.

Thanks for your help.

19

Completely unnecessary, just install additional packages via YaST (from online Repos, OSS and NON-OSS will be added by default, add an Update Repo and Packman and you will have the most important ones).

So repair it by uninstalling the wrong drivers (can be done without even having a GUI, yast also runs fine from command line) and installing the correct ones, still no need to reinstall, this isn’t windows.

20

Thanks for the tips. It’s been a few years since I’ve used SUSE (the last time I was active was before the forums merged), so I’ve forgotten all the various ins and outs. I’ve been using Mint at home for a year or two (which uses EnvyNG/APT to install nVidia drivers and only offers a live disc for system installation, so the live disc includes the Mint-specific packages).

SUSE is a whole different animal, and it will take me a little while to get the hang of it again. As always, though, the support here is top-notch. :slight_smile: