Hi,
I’d like to erase win 8.1 from a laptop I have and install Fedora. Will I need to reformat the hard disk or can I use the existing file system there as is? Or, put it another way, is there a way to install without reformatting of the hard disk?
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Fedora’s installer (Anaconda) can resize NTFS partitions to free up space for Fedora.
Hi, are you saying that it won’t be necessary to reformat?
Actually all the space used by windows could be available for fedora…
NTFS is a file system who is made for Windows. Linux has his own File systems. Tell us what your real problem is and we might be able to give you advice how to solve it.
Sure, I’d like to save the info in the file system (almost 1 TB of data) without having to delete everything and reloading the info again in case that is possible. I don’t need Windows anyumore but I need the data. Of course I can do a backup on an external hard drive, but if there is a way that Linux can use effectively those files on NTFS it would be great. For example right now I have 2 partitions, the first one having some 200 Gb, where the OS (Wind8.1) lives and the other partition is where the actual data live. I could reformat the 200 Gb partition for example (to install Linux there) and leave intact the other where the data are living. Does it make sense?
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People use NTFS for media storage so that they can access their files from both Linux and Windows. Linux can read from and write to NTFS just fine. But since NTFS lack certain features like UNIX file permissions, I think you can’t use it for root (and home?) filesystem. As you suggested, reformatting 200GB partition for root filesystem and installing Fedora there and mounting the other partition to access your data makes sense I think.
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I think the best would be to backup your data, install Fedora (including rearrangement and formatting of partitions), then restore your data onto your new Fedora system. No more NTFS partitions since you are not dual-booting with windows, only native Linux file systems…
Basically there is a way, for example using gparted moving all data together to free some space in which you can create linux partitions.
https://www.howtoforge.com/partitioning_with_gparted
However this is not very secure and best thing is to backup your data on an external hard drive.
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I propose you make a backup on a external Harddrive. Might takes a bit longer but afterwards you have hands free to do what ever you want with the new installation. As Fedora now uses BTRFS i would not miss to use it. Copying on BTRFS is much faster as between NTFS and everything else.
Let make fedora the work of partitioning … afterwards you still can make a space for your data.
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Welll…many thanks for all your inputs! Now I have a better idea on how to proceed
Cheers!
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