Installation opensuse 11.4 dual boot vista

[bals28mjk]

So, I just downloaded opensuse 11.4 and burned it to a dvd. It seems to be a workable cd, (I've had problems getting ubuntu going), but the thing is during the installation I got paranoid that it was just going to install opensuse and wipe out vista and the hdd so I aborted. I basically want to do a dual boot and don't know if they'll prompt me for that option. Has anyone installed this?

[oz]

It's been a while since I last installed OpenSuse, but unless they've changed things the installer should give you the option to setup a dual-boot system during the installation. Still, it's always a good idea to have a backup of your current system on hand in case anything should go wrong.

[bals28mjk]

Thanks. It's pretty much hit or miss on this, I kind of want to be sure it doesn't delete anything without my permission. I don't have another copy of vista and some of the stuff on hdd is useful to have but I won't be destroyed if it deletes, but highly inconveinced etc.

[oz]

For backup purposes, the best option (in my opinion) would be to create a system image of your current system then you can experiment all you want, and if you goof up anything it's a simple task to restore the system image to your machine. Applications like Clonezilla (a linux app) and True Image (a windows app) are good for this purpose.

BTW: since duplicate posts are not allowed, I've deleted your opensuse post in your other thread since you've started this thread on the same subject.

[bals28mjk]

Yeah, that does sound like a good idea. But I've never done it before. Vista gives you an option to back up the files and ask where you'd like to save them. I always was under the assumption you needed a lot of memory for this, e.g: it wouldn't fit on 700 mb disk. Also, say vista and everything got wiped out, I could just pop it in and be good to go? I don't know how the recovery process goes. That's why I'm reluctant to try it, seems like just another thing to worry about.

[oz]

Keep in mind that system imaging and backing up files are somewhat different. That said, you should always keep a full system backup of some type on hand even if you aren't experimenting with different Linux distributions. As things are now, you would be in big trouble if you were to mess up your current system and don't have a Windows install (or recovery) disk, or a system image of some type. On the other hand, if you are sure your Vista backup option mentioned above can restore your system to a fully working state from scratch, that should be good enough.

Let the distro experimentations begin...

[yancek]

You don't indicate whether you have preinstalled vista, if you did, it probably has a Recovery partition but you would need to have a Recovery CD in order to access it later.

I haven't installed 11.4, but in Opensuse 11.3, after selecting your time zone, you get a suggested partitioning page which tells you which partitions it sees and which will be formatted. After creating a user and setting root password, you should get a Live Installation setting page with many more details about what will happen.

There should not be any problems but if you are new I would definitely suggest backing up data and probably read some tutorials online about installing it. If you get to a point where you don't understand something it is best to stop. Keeping notes on each step is also good as the more information you have the easier it will be to resolve any problem.

[bals28mjk]

Success!

Thanks for the help and suggestions.