YaST Partitioning Help - Shrinking

English Install/Boot/Login
1

Dear All,

Installing OpenSUSE on my Acer PC. I am currently running Windows 7 and would like to dual-boot SUSE.

I will be using SUSE for educational purposes exclusively and would like to keep the majority of my media - and hence disk space - on my existing windows partition.

My layout looks like this:

  1. 1TB Disk
    a. System Data
    b. More System Data
    c. Windows (~970 GB)

When I use the automagically generated partitioning proposal it wants to shrink the Windows side down to ~400 GB like this:

  1. ITB Disk
    a. "
    b. "
    c. Windows (~400 GB)
    d. Linux (~570 GB) into its four parts, etc.

What I would like to do is change the partitioning so it looks like this:

  1. ITB Disk
    a. "
    b. "
    c. Windows (~800 GB)
    d. Linux (~170 GB) into its four parts, etc.

But when I try to edit the proposed layout it doesn’t let me resize the partition made in part d. It says it is currently being accessed. Also, I am not confidant in my ability to do this correctly if I create my own installation from scratch.

Anyone have any ideas? Can I do the partitioning in Windows first?

2

I am able to resize the part that will contain the \home directory, but it says that I will have 400GB of unpartitioned data. My understanding is that such unpartitioned space will go unused, so I should try to reallocate it, but it says that an extended partition cannot be resized.

3

I’m a little unclear exactly where you are with this
But you should always backup important data first
Then defrag windows.

Next use your windows partitioner to shrink windows to acquire the 170GB free space you require
Next use Parted Magic to create an extended partition in the 170GB free space
Then create your logical partitions in the extended space

Please check this
http://forums.opensuse.org/english/information-new-users/advanced-how-faq-read-only/451831-install-opensuse-alongside-win7-vista-guide.html

This video might give you a idea too, but it’s just a demo and in it I use Parted to shrink windows, which is usually fine, but there are differing opinions
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/10573557/win_lin_partitions.m4v