will partitioning my disk allow me to save my photographs on my existing windows?
 

Hi,

Basically, I have been advised by a friend to uninstall windows and install linux. I want to do this but there is one small problem. I have 26 gigabytes of photographs on my computer. I am using a dual core, 500 gig disk. I don't have an external drive so (and forgive me if this is a total newbie question) I was wondering if it is at all possible to create a new partition that i can copy this 26 gigs of photos to and then remove windows from the remainder of the disk?
I agreed with tink's ethos of enabling someone to help themselves rather than giving them the turn key solutions so I am hoping people can just point me in the right direction if this is possible to do.
:)

My advice would be to shrink the existing Windows partition on your hard disk to create enough disk space to install Linux so that you can have a multiboot setup.
You appear to be using Windows Vista, so you will need a third party tool to shrink the existing Windows partition. I suggest gparted. http://gparted.org/

I'm leaving it to the dual-boot pros here (not me). If you have the means, you might think about buying a second hard disk, external USB drive, or at the very least, a 32-GB USB flash stick. Any of these items can be had for less than $60, should you look closely enough in Best Buy or Walmart. Sooner or later, you'll need to back up those 26 GB of photographs, even if you continue to use Windows and only Windows.

The short answer is yes - or you could just put them in a sub-directory of /home.
Make sure your /home directory is in its own partition.
I'd recommend that you copy ALL your photos and other documents to a large USB key as a backup first.

Specifics on how to do it because you have not posted enough specific information. The suggestions above are good if you know how to do it.

First shrink the windows partition to create space for whichever one of the 500+ Linux distributions you might want to use. Depending upon which of the many versions of windows you have, you would be better off using windows to shrink its partition. Older versions of windows don't have that capability natively.

Create another partition from windows large enough to hold all your photos and move them all to that partition.

You don't "uninstall" operating systems the way you do programs/applications. You just format the partitions and install and everything previously on the partition(s) will be overwritten.

Which windows do you have and which Linux are you planning to install and do you know how many partitions you have and their size?