any distro will do, i want to keep my /home directory intact
while i format my / /usr

is this possible? its extremely easy in windows, but i havnt tried it in linux yet.


thanks!!

I'm not sure what your saying you want to do

When you say 'format', what do you mean? You want to wipe off your current linux installation? What do you want to do ultimately?

i want to wipe/format/kill/destroy all data on my windows partition i want windows dead in ashes cool:

so my question is do have to kill all my cool movies on my other partitions ?

can i use my c: on 15 gb for just the sake of linux running better and putting all the programs on other partitions ?

or even easier can i use the same option as windows gives me ?
"keep old settings and filesblalbla..."

or just something similar


thank you!!

Your best bet is to save anything you want in the windoze partition then use a partitioner like QT parted to fromat the fat32 / NTFS partition without affecting your Linux installation.

so with other words the answer is a brutal no ?

If your /home directory is a separate partition (as a sensible person would do ) then you can leave that 100% intact whilst formatting other partitions. If /home is just a directory in / then you're screwed or you'll have to manually backup the directory to CD or something and then copy it all back across when you reinstall linux. Don't forget to pass the -a switch to cp when you copy though or you'll lose all hidden files (which is most config files)

I'm not sure you understood what Hawky was saying.....Let me see if this helps:

Data on your existing Windows partition is not something you can save but data on your existing Linux partitions should be fine. Basically, just use QT Parted to format your Windows partition into something that Linux can actually use like ext3 or reiserfs.

Actually I lied in the first sentence. If you REALLY want to save the data on your Windows partition, you could mount it as an NTFS drive, but that pretty much means you couldn't write to it. However, you could copy the data you want to save to a Linux partition and then blow away the Windows partition.

okay thank you cuse thats pretty much it, i would like to have my movies alive and kickin.
so basicly i keep my other partitions as NTFS and when iv installed slack i can copy it to my linux partition ? i will be able to use the NTFS partition? this is sure ?

Yep, but you need a 'mount point' for it, so linux knows that it's there and can access it.

I take it you had Windows on your box before you installed Slackware?
If so, then it may have auto-detected the windows partition during the install process and created a mount-point for it.

I'm not sure about GNOME, but if you use KDE then in konqueror's address bar type /mnt/ and hit enter, you'll see a load of directories listed and any floppies, cdroms, usb drives that you have mounted, if you see windows then it's already there! Otherwise, do the above.

You know where to come if you get stuck.....

Good Luck!!