Partitions during installation

[jorgeregula]

Well, I used to have debian only before on my previous PC. The reason I didn't have Windows too is because I screwed up during installation.

I got a new PC now that came with Windows 7 installed on it. I want to install debian. Everything's fine until I get to the installing to partition. Now, I'm being extra careful here because I don't want to mess this windows installation up.

Here's how I want my partitions to be:

I have a 1 tb harddrive and want to install both OSs in this same drive.

On partition 1 (Windows partition) I have 500gb of space
On partition 2 I have 450gb of space
I have around 50gb free in another partition I named Linux (I formated it, though, I guess I should've left it as free space with no format?)

I want to install Debian on that 50gb partition of my 1tb hard-drive. But when the installer gets to the part of the partitions, only a "primary" 994gb partition shows up and another 6gb "swap" partition shows. I wanted the partitioner to show all the partitions that show up in Windows, so I can just choose the 50gb partition I created and install debian on it, but it only shows those two partitions.

Now, I could choose the 994gb partition of the harddrive it shows at debian installer and make another 50gb partition out of it to install debian, but that would delete the info contained within those 994gb right? So I would lose my windows installation and the partitions that are indeed visible on windows.

I have no idea what to do. Am I destined to lose all my info? Partitioning has always been a headache for me.

Edit: something I forgot to add, would a possible solution be deleting the 50gb partition I made so it becomes free unformatted space? then that free unformatted space would show up on debian installer for me to install debian on it?

[MikeTbob]

Hello and Welcome to the forums.
Yes, the best idea would be to delete the 50GB partition and then start the installer where you will tell it how much space to use.

[jorgeregula]

Thanks, damn, yeah that worked, but I screwed up, but now in a different manner. So I deleted the 50gb partition in windows and left is as free space. Then I used booted with the installer and it detected that free space as expected and installed on it.

But then it started downloading base packages and it got stuck at the very beggining, probably 3 percent into it. My guess is because of an internet failure on my side, and it couldn't connect back to the server to keep downloading packages so it got stuck. I didn't know what to do, I knew there must've been a way to restart the installation process by getting into the console, but I didn't know how, so I rebooted in hope that the installation continued where it got stuck. To my luck, it didn't and made my PC unbootable.

Now, if I run the installer again, it doesn't detect the 50gb free space, and only shows up the 994gb partition like at the beggining. If I install it like that, it's gonna screw up. So linux in the 50gb partition didn't even install all base packages and now I'm left with an unbootable system. Windows 7 must be untouched since the installer only modified the 50gb free space and I think modified the partition table.

What are you supposed to do when the installer is interrupted when it hasn't even installed the base packages making the system unbootable? I guess I can recover my windows installation right? How do I make it bootable again?

I can't find a solution by using google and I'm getting pretty nervous because I may have lost all the info I had on my hard drive along with windows. :S Help would be GREATLY appreciated.

[MikeTbob]

Boot any LiveCD and issue this command please, post your results

fdisk -l

That's a lowercase L and not a 1. I'm sure your Windows partition is still there.

[jorgeregula]

Well thank you, but I could fix this last night. Apparently linux set the primary partition to one it had made and to the windows one so no matter how many startup recovery tools I used for windows I wasn't gonna work. So I used a windows 7 installation disc, changed the primary partition to one windows had made in order to boot and then ran the startup recovery tool. It worked like a charm, and the option to install linux at boot appeared again. So I reinstalled debian and now it's working.

I'm actually using debian right now So fast. I love this. Thanks for your help.