I want to install Mint on my laptop, but I cannot back up?

[DallasHokie11]

I have a 60GB C: drive (and another 60GB D:)

I have about 50GB filled already, so that makes it almost impossible to back that up. And I need vista in working condition for school when it starts up next week (go hokies) and I am afraid that installing Mint will mess it up. Mint worked *perfectly* for my Acer Aspire One, but this computer is an Acer Aspire 7520-5185.

So I would like to know what my options are. Is there a way I can back up JUST vista and none of my other files onto my D: drive? Just incase, and install Mint on C:?

Does partitioning C: smaller have any chances of corrupting booting into Vista? Please help!

Thank you.

[lagagnon]

You only need 3GB to install Mint, plus a 500MB-1GB swap partition. First of all get rid of any crap on your Windows system (most Windows systems have huge amounts of that ). Flush all your browser caches, remove temp files, any apps you don't use. Then run the Disk Defragmenter (something you'll never have to do with Linux). Insert the Live Mint CD, run gparted, and reduce the size of the Windows partition to say somethng 2GB larger than it currently is after the clean-up. Then install Mint to the remaining new empty space.

[DallasHokie11]

Thank you for that response.

And you are sure that this will keep vista operational? I'm not sure what disk defragment does, but will look it up following this. I just have to have vista working for school, a lot of software has to go on there for my lab classes and if it doesn't work, uh oh.

[lagagnon]

And you are sure that this will keep vista operational?

Yes.

[DallasHokie11]

And you are sure that this will keep vista operational?

Yes.

Ok, great! I will let you know how this turns out here in a few hours.

[mike2039]

If your c drive and you d drive are really just two partitions on the same drive, I would just delete the d drive and install Linux Mint there. That would be safer than trying to resize the c drive. You can delete the d drive by booting into Windows Vista, go to control panel>administrative tools> storage. You can also increase the size of your c drive there, which you might want to do because it is pretty full. You could increase it to 90 or 100 gigabytes. The 20 or 30 gigabytes remaining will be more than enough for Mint. Increasing the size of a partition never causes problems, it's decreasing the size of a partition that causes problems. Just make sure you have all of your data off of the d partition before you delete it. Once you have done that, you can boot off of you Linux Mint cd and choose "largest contiguous free space" when the installer asks you where you want to install it.

Generally speaking, as long as you still have your Windows Vista Dvd, any borking that happens to Vista can be fixed in the recovery console.

[mike2039]

The path for the Widows Vista partition manger should be control panel>administrative tools>storage>disk management

[DallasHokie11]

I think I will pass on installing it to the HD. I've read a comment from someone with the same laptop as mine, and he said that the computer would not stop taking energy from the battery even after shutting down off mint.

I am more interested in the persistent installs via USB drive. So, if I go to BestBuy and purchase a 4GB USB drive, I just follow these directions:

http://www.pendrivelinux.com/usb-linux- ... n-windows/

1. Download and run USBMint7.exe extracting the contents to your desktop, a USBMint folder is created
2. Download the LinuxMint-7.iso and copy it to the USBMint folder on your desktop
3. From the USBMint folder on your desktop, run fixmint.bat and follow the onscreen instructions
4. Reboot your PC and set your system BIOS or Boot Menu to boot from the USB device, save your changes and reboot booting from the USB memory stick

And that's all? I just plug into the comp, and voila? How much space left off of a 4GB USB drive would still be left to keep my college papers and materials on there?

Thanks for all your help

[lagagnon]

I think I will pass on installing it to the HD. I've read a comment from someone with the same laptop as mine, and he said that the computer would not stop taking energy from the battery even after shutting down off mint.

That is complete nonsense. If you "suspend" any laptop using any operating system it will continue to use energy, but Mint (or any operating system for that matter) will not drain the battery if it is shut down.

[DallasHokie11]

I think I will pass on installing it to the HD. I've read a comment from someone with the same laptop as mine, and he said that the computer would not stop taking energy from the battery even after shutting down off mint.

That is complete nonsense. If you "suspend" any laptop using any operating system it will continue to use energy, but Mint (or any operating system for that matter) will not drain the battery if it is shut down.

Here's the thread: http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.p ... &sk=t&sd=a.

Ok, so assuming my C:/D: drive are partitioned on the same hard-drive (how can I check?), I can delete all of D, extend C without any chance of losing data, and voila? I can install mint 7? Maybe Mint 7 KDE. On either C or D?

[Anaxis]

Ok, so assuming my C:/D: drive are partitioned on the same hard-drive (how can I check?), I can delete all of D, extend C without any chance of losing data, and voila? I can install mint 7? Maybe Mint 7 KDE. On either C or D?

Easiest way to check this IMO would be to create a Mint LiveCD and use gparted. If you have two drives, the gparted screen will show /dev/sd* in the top right corner (*denotes a letter, usually a), and the entire disk partitioned in one big partition, and you will have the option via drop-down menu to show /dev/sd? (? being a different letter than *, probably b).

If you have one drive that's been partitioned into two partitions, you will see only /dev/sd* in the dropdown menu (make sure you don't have any USB drives in, of course, because gparted will read those too, and might screw you up), and the drive will be split in half or 3/4 and 1/4, or any variant thereof.

If you have two drives, simply choose /dev/sd? from the dropdown menu (make sure there's no data on it first!) and delete the parition there. During the install, you can choose to install Mint KDE on /dev/sd?.

If you have one drive with two partitions, delete the second partition on /dev/sd*, and choose to install Mint KDE there during the install.

Do you know which version (either Mint 7, Mint 7 KDE, or perhaps Mint XFCE) you want?