On Tue, Mar 5, 2013 at 6:40 PM, Steven Rosenberg <stevenhrosenb...@gmail.com> wrote: > On Fri, Mar 1, 2013 at 12:12 PM, Mark Filipak > <markfilipak.li...@gmail.com> wrote: > >> I don't dare fiddle with my hard disk. It's a Dell laptop that has WinXP >> preinstalled without a maintenance partition and I don't have a backup CD. >> If the current WinXP gets trashed, I'm hosed. > > If this is the case, I wouldn't go forward. I'd pull your current hard > drive, put in a new one and install to the clean drive. That way you > can experiment and get a feel for the installation procedure. > > That said, I've done many installs of Debian, Ubuntu and other Linux > and BSD systems on hard drives with existing Windows installations > (and I never use a "maintenance partition" for Windows), and it always > works out fine. > > But don't commit to an installation of any kind without a full backup > of your data. Clonezilla is your friend.
Now that I've seen the whole thread: -- Get a backup drive and use Clonezilla to back up your full hard disk with Windows on it -- Use Gparted with a live disc such as Parted Magic to shrink your Windows partition to a size you can live with -- Install Debian with the normal installer in the space you freed up -- Let Debian write the bootloader to the MBR -- Debian will find your Windows partition and account for it in the GRUB menu -- If any of this worries you, find a test machine somewhere -- they're not hard to find -- and do a bunch of installs. Once you do 20 or so, you'll know a lot more More than anything, don't run before you can crawl with confidence. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/CALDrw3Mz=3_r4y_ehnq+fw1klor3htomsjozws2_zfv+xdy...@mail.gmail.com