LinuxQuestions.org - partition hard drive (sda) in suse linux 11

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As I understood sedsed problem he/she wanted to install windows which should be in a primary partition.

@yancek
Yes i want to install win7 on the laptop, so it has to be an primary.

@michaelk
Im now thinking about doing what you said, so im searching for an LIVE cd download .

Quote:

Originally Posted by michaelk (Post 4893200)

You would need to log in as root and unmount /home.
create a directory /mnt/oldhome
Mount your home partition to /mnt/oldhome
Now you can copy the contents of your home partition to the /home directory.
cd /mnt/oldhome
cp -rp * /home
To turn off swap:
swapoff /dev/sda5
Edit /etc/fstab to remove the lines for /home and swap.

Once you are comfortable that the contents of the home partition have been copied you can reboot the PC. If everything is working you can not safely delete the /home, swap and then the extended partition.

If you feel brave enough you could move the recovery partition and then resize / to give it some more space. You should boot from a live CD to resize the / partition.

Sorry for the late reply

Today i had time to try out what you said. I found, downloaded and burned an Gparted Live cd. (i have to run it in fail safe mode. In the normal mode Gparted doesnt start, the laptop freezes).

I did all you said: Copied /home. Deleted /home , swap, and the EXtended partition.
I created a new primary partition with Gparted. format:NTFS.
The new partition ( i called it C) is over 600GB.

I insert win7 ultimate and reboot. but again i have the same problem. Win7 installs to the point where it has to reboot to finish the instalation - but at this point it starts the instalation over from start. And it sais :disk error (so my linux is not usable too).

You should also set the boot flag active for the windows partition.

Windows will automatically overwrite the linux bootloader. You can use your linux installation media to reload the bootloader typically grub and then add an entry for windows.

FYI you need to boot to the rescue mode in order to reinstall grub.

http://en.opensuse.org/SDB:Repair_MB...indows_install

I set the flag 'boot' in gparted.

Now i get this:

BOOTMGR is missing
pres ctrl+alt+del to restart.

I will now try to restore the bootloader.
Shouldn't windows 7 be bootable at this point?

Earlyer, i restored the bootloader with the commands in your link:
http://en.opensuse.org/SDB:Repair_MB...indows_install

i used my hp restore disk (if i remember right) and just executed the few comands.

After that i installed win7 successfully. I had to downlaod win7 with service pack 1. My laptop needed the drivers contained in sp1.

Also i had to set the bootflag on the partition.

In the end i had to download some more drivers from the HP web site do activate my wirelessadapter and so on. There are alot of drivers that should be installed. I writhe this for those who read this post an use an HP ProBook. (in My case HP ProBook 4740s ).

Now the only thing left is to restore the bootloader again, but then im afraid i wont be able to boot in win7 again.
At this moent it loads just win 7 (bcos i didnt restor the linux bootloader after the win7sp1 install) whicj is enough for ma at the moment.

@michalek
thanks man, you saved me.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Micik (Post 4491683)

Hello to all,
I have a problem when trying to repartition my hard drive in suse linux 11. I have bought HP laptop that came with suse linux 11 preinstalled. Now, I don't want to remove linux and want to make dual boot with Win 7.

First step is to allocate enough fre space for Windows, but here I found an obstacle. When trying to resize the biggest partition in yast I receive an error saying that extended partition cannot be resized.
My hard drive has /devsda1 to /dev/sda6. The biggest is /dev/sda4 (Extended) and is 300 GB large.
How to shrink that partition to 200 GB and leave 100 GB unallocated space for Windows?
One thing that is strange to me is that /dev/sda6 is almost the same saze as /dev/sda4. sda6 is linux native. Should I resize sda6?

What exactly is extended partition, I'm really confused.

Thanks

Looks like you will have to back up your files, and make a clean install of GNU/Linux(the proper name, because Linux is just a kernel) and put the filesystems(for example, root and /home) in separate partitions(not one extended partition). If that is not possible, use LVM.
I don't know why extended partitions cannot be resized.

Quote:

Originally Posted by ComputerCritic (Post 5741196)

I don't know why extended partitions cannot be resized.

Why did you pick this ancient thread to rejuvenate?

Extendeds do not have a meaningful size. The better partitioning tools automatically show the size of the extended as encompassing whatever logicals plus freespace directly adjacent to them exists.

Their "size", whether fully in use or not, if beginning after the last existing primary, extend from the end of the last primary to the end of the disk. If there are primaries at start and end of disk, then their size is whatever space exists between end of earlier primary and start of later primary. What's meaningful is the size of whatever logical partitions and freespace reside within them.