On 13/10/2010 01:24 πμ, Ogya Chief wrote: > > > > If you care about Windows 7 at all (e.g., for playing games) you should > > back up the Win 7 installation completely before starting. How you go > > about it depends on your new machine. If it came with recovery options, > > you should investigate them. With the Ultimate edition, Win 7 comes > > with a good backup program, you can use that. Otherwise, you can look > > to the various alternatives for backing up. > > > > But I urge you to use something. Most of the programs, free and > > non-free, work properly to shrink a partition, but it is easy to commit > > a user error and wipe things out completely. > > > > If it were me, I would shrink (resize) the partition first, before > > running the Debian installer. That is, take it in reversible stages. > > This is a matter of taste. It isn't strictly necessary. > > > > > > I have Win 7 home premium. I will find out what tools for > partitioning/backup came with it and decide on my next course of action.
For backing up the whole disk before starting with dangerous operations I suggest Clonezilla (the open-source equivalent of Ghost). It use it regularly and hasn't betrayed me. As for the rest procedures, I also suggest you resize the windows partition with gparted from a ubuntu live cd, and then run the debian installer.
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