I haven’t booted into Windows 7 for months now, getting everything I need from my VirtualBox setup. Is there a way to wipe Windows from my system and re-allocate the space to openSuse?
If I need to completely re-install to achieve this, is there a way to back up my entire system and then restore it to the hard drive? I’ve spent a bit of time tweaking things and installing additional software, so I don’t want to lose that.
I assume you mean you have openSUSE running in VBox on Windows? As such the openSUSE filesystem is actually inside a Windows file. Probably a backup of your personal files and a clean install is the most straightforward method. There are ways of dumping whole partitions and restoring, e.g. using a clonezilla CD. You’d probably have to make some edits to the boot menu.lst and fstab afterwards. Also for the NIC setup. Depends on your level of skill and taste for adventure.
I assume the opposite, i.e. that you have a dual boot W7/openSUSE, where W7 is no longer needed but since you prefer doing the W7 stuff in Virtualbox on openSUSE. If so, use Yast’s Partitioner to remove / reuse the W7 partitions, format them with ext4, create mountpoints. Use the Yast Bootloader config module to remove the W7 bootline.
Yes, that sounds like the more likely explanation since he wrote “haven’t booted into Windows”. In that case what Knurpht said, just reformat the partitions.
BTW, that W7 install is only taking up disk space, it’s not using your CPU or anything like that. So unless you are short of disk space, there’s no hurry to reuse the partitions.
One of the others will pipe in with info about mounts etc I’m sure but just to mention that whether you can coalesce the liberated space depends on the current partition layout. If you do, as root, in a terminal window:
On 2010-12-22 11:36, aescott wrote:
>
> Ok, thanks. I do have dual boot, sorry if that was not clear.
>
> I’ll have a think about the installation - one of my issues is that I
> haven’t got space for everything in /home, despite a large hard drive.
The easiest route is to format the windows partition as ext4 or xfs, and
mount it, say, on /data/mineonly, or /home/myuser/extradata. Then you
simply move files from /home/myuser/ to /home/myuser/extradata. It is an
addition to your user on another partition. Being your own home space you
can choose what files you move over.
This can be done with the yast partitioner module.
> Is there a good source for learning about mounts and partitions? It’s
> not the sort of thing I want to pick up by default.
You may be able to shrink windows some more, and create a new partition for /home in the space saved without losing the dual boot, defragging to free up used area at end of drive may be necessary first.
Agree with those who say it’s basically simply a matter of doing a mkfs on the windows partition and mounting the new space, copying in the data you want, renaming the old home, create empty directory mount point, and copy in the data as super user using something like “cp -ax old new”