new used pc and partition question

[wa4chq]

Greetings all....hope everyone is well.  My older bro gave me a Dell Optiplex 3010 pc.  It uses a sata hard drive and runs Windows 8.  I would like to partition the HD and install MX-19.  I've partitioned many hard drives before but not one this large and with 8 partitions already in place.  It looks like /dev/sda5 is the one I need to split but here is the run down:

sda1 500M EFI system

sda2 40M unknown

sda3 128M Microsoft reserved

sda4 490M MS recovery

sda5 454G MS Basic

sda6 450M MS recovery

sda7 350M MS recovery

sda8 9.1G MS recovery

If I use Gparted and select sda5 and resize it, will it then create sda9?  My concern is if I install linux, will the boot manager be able to sort thru all the other  partitions and give me the correct options for booting?  I really don't need the Windows partition but I do have a video editor and some games that I like to use that runs on Windows.  If I hose it, well I can live without it.....

Right now, I am booting from a disk running a live version of Mint.  Booting from a USB stick would be nice but I haven't got that to work.  I press F12 when I boot and scroll down and select boot from USB and it doesn't read the stick....

Anyway, have a good morning and Tnx for any advice about the partitioning.....

Edited May 26, 2021 by wa4chq

[abarbarian]

Quote

USB Controller:    Enable or Disable the integrated USB Controller for Boot Support, Front USB, Rear Dual USB, Rear Quad USB

 

Have you checked this setting in the bios for usb booting ?

 

Sometimes putting a os on to a usb will not boot, trying a different method may do the trick. I have found Ventoy a pretty good solution.

 

https://forums.scotsnewsletter.com/index.php?/topic/79474-linux-fringe-distros/&do=findComment&comment=468578

 

You are probably better of resizing the partition through the Windows os as that way you should be able to leep all your Windows intact.

 

How to Repartition Hard Drive without Losing Data in Windows 10, 8,7?

 

I use GPT partitioning and REFind for booting  so can not help any further.

 

This step by step guide will help,

 

How to dual boot Windows 10 and MX Linux

 

 

 

 

[wa4chq]

20 minutes ago, abarbarian said:

 

Have you checked this setting in the bios for usb booting ?

 

Sometimes putting a os on to a usb will not boot, trying a different method may do the trick. I have found Ventoy a pretty good solution.

 

https://forums.scotsnewsletter.com/index.php?/topic/79474-linux-fringe-distros/&do=findComment&comment=468578

 

You are probably better of resizing the partition through the Windows os as that way you should be able to leep all your Windows intact.

 

How to Repartition Hard Drive without Losing Data in Windows 10, 8,7?

 

I use GPT partitioning and REFind for booting  so can not help any further.

 

This step by step guide will help,

 

How to dual boot Windows 10 and MX Linux

 

 

 

 

Hi AB....tnx for the reply.  Yes, I did check the bios and set it to USB.  Prior to that, I found info for getting the stick to boot for Windows 8....I don't have the info in front of me so I can't tell you exactly what I did but it didn't seem to work.  I am not familiar with Ventoy.  I will take a look at it....tnx.

Good suggestion to partition using Windows (fyi...they need to spell partition "partion" cuz everytime I type it, that's how it comes out...lol) that makes sense.....I will take a look at the link you provided for that as well.  Many tnx!

 

[securitybreach]

If you don't care about windows, delete them all and setup the drive like you would normally. Also, 500gb is not a large drive

 

 

 

 

[securitybreach]

Even with windows, those aren't all required as you only need the EFI partition and the windows partition. Those are dell recovery partitions. That windows setup wouldn't work without them though.

 

If you do need windows, just download win10 from Microsoft and it will active using the key the machine comes with. Then you can make a windows partition as big as you need. Then install mx afterwards.

[wa4chq]

4 minutes ago, securitybreach said:

If you don't care about windows, delete them all and setup the drive like you would normally. Also, 500gb is not a large drive

 

 

 

 

 Hey SB....Right....That is one of my options if it gets hosed.  If I can save it for my vid editor, that would be nice.... 

RE the 500gb drive....yeah, I guess it isn't large by today's standards. 

[Bookmem]

1 hour ago, wa4chq said:

Greetings all....hope everyone is well.  My older bro gave me a Dell Optiplex 3010 pc.  It uses a sata hard drive and runs Windows 8.  I would like to partition the HD and install MX-19.  I've partitioned many hard drives before but not one this large and with 8 partitions already in place.  It looks like /dev/sda5 is the one I need to split but here is the run down:

sda1 500M EFI system

sda2 40M unknown

sda3 128M Microsoft reserved

sda4 490M MS recovery

sda5 454G MS Basic

sda6 450M MS recovery

sda7 350M MS recovery

sda8 9.1G MS recovery

If I use Gparted and select sda5 and resize it, will it then create sda9?  My concern is if I install linux, will the boot manager be able to sort thru all the other  partitions and give me the correct options for booting?  I really don't need the Windows partition but I do have a video editor and some games that I like to use that runs on Windows.  If I hose it, well I can live without it.....

Right now, I am booting from a disk running a live version of Mint.  Booting from a USB stick would be nice but I haven't got that to work.  I press F12 when I boot and scroll down and select boot from USB and it doesn't read the stick....

Anyway, have a good morning and Tnx for any advice about the partitioning.....

I'm going to assume you want to setup a dual boot and keep your current Win install.  The way I'd do it would be to first upgrade to Win 10 using the MS "Media Creation Tool".  Then use Disk Manager to shrink the "C:" partition to create space for Linux, rather than using gparted.  Then you can install Linux to the free space.

[V.T. Eric Layton]

First thing I'd like to know is what is on all those partitions? If there's nothing of consequence on most of them, I would delete those partitions (be sure to leave your Windows partitions alone - there's probably only one). Once you deleted the un-needed partitions in Gparted, it will free up space on the drive which you can now use to create your Linux /(root), /home, and /swap partitions.

 

You'll probably lose your Windows bootloader when Linux is installed. You'll have to modify MX Linux's bootloader to load Windows. Shouldn't be a big deal.

 

NOTE... -- VERY IMPORTANT -- MS WINDOWS MUST BE THE FIRST OS ON THE FIRST PARTITION (sda1). Why? I dunno... it's a Windows ego thing.

[securitybreach]

2 hours ago, V.T. Eric Layton said:

 VERY IMPORTANT -- MS WINDOWS MUST BE THE FIRST OS ON THE FIRST PARTITION (sda1). Why? I dunno... it's a Windows ego thing.

 

Actuality you can install windows second. The reason it's suggested to do so first is because windows will always overwrite the bootloader. So you could do so but you would have to chroot back in using live media and reinstall the bootloader for it to work.

[V.T. Eric Layton]

Well, with multiple drives on my systems, I've found that MS Windows will not allow installation on anything by but sda1/partition 1. I bypass this by installing Windows with the sda drive disconnected. Once it's installed on the sdc drive (#3 on my system), I then reconnect sda and install Slackware.

 

 

Edited - incorrect word. ~vtel

[securitybreach]

Odd as I was pretty sure at one point that what I mentioned was right. Oh well. lol

[V.T. Eric Layton]

1 hour ago, securitybreach said:

Odd as I was pretty sure at one point that what I mentioned was right. Oh well. lol

 

Meh... maybe it has something to do with the older (non-UEFI) BIOSes that I've been dealing with???

 

Quote

All Windows operating systems from Windows 95 onwards can be located on (almost) any partition, but the boot files (io.sys, bootmgr, ntldr, etc.) must reside on a primary partition. However, other factors, such as a PC's BIOS (Boot sequence on standard PC) may also impose specific requirements as to which partition must contain the primary OS.*

 

*from THIS article.

[securitybreach]

Could be.

[sunrat]

The USB stick possibly doesn't boot because it was created in MBR/BIOS mode and the system is looking for UEFI boot on it. Recreate the stick with UEFI boot. Seen this happen a few times over on Debian forums.

I agree with the suggestion to nuke and pave. Install Windows 10 on maybe a 100GB partition, remove all the annoying telemetry and stuff with Win10Privacy, then install Linux. You can install Win10 to the full disk and then boot it and run the Windows Disk Manager to shrink it back down to make space for Linux.

[sunrat]

2 hours ago, V.T. Eric Layton said:

 

Meh... maybe it has something to do with the older (non-UEFI) BIOSes that I've been dealing with???

 

All Windows operating systems from Windows 95 onwards can be located on (almost) any partition, but the boot files (io.sys, bootmgr, ntldr, etc.) must reside on a primary partition. However, other factors, such as a PC's BIOS (Boot sequence on standard PC) may also impose specific requirements as to which partition must contain the primary OS.*

*from THIS article.

 

That info is for MBR/BIOS systems. Modern computers use GPT/UEFI with no primary partitions.

[securitybreach]

Actually, now that you mention it... that was the reason that windows needed to be first, the primary partitions. Its been well over 10 years since I had a window's installation (besides one of my work machines).

 

[V.T. Eric Layton]

14 minutes ago, sunrat said:

That info is for MBR/BIOS systems. Modern computers use GPT/UEFI with no primary partitions.

 

I know that. That was my point. I've never installed any OS on any systems with "modern" BIOS systems.

[wa4chq]

12 hours ago, Bookmem said:

I'm going to assume you want to setup a dual boot and keep your current Win install.  The way I'd do it would be to first upgrade to Win 10 using the MS "Media Creation Tool".  Then use Disk Manager to shrink the "C:" partition to create space for Linux, rather than using gparted.  Then you can install Linux to the free space.

Tnx for the info Bookmem.  Yes, originally I was going for dual boot.  But I gave it some serious thought and changed the game plan.

[wa4chq]

Well, I decided against the MX install and went with Mint.  And I also decided to not dual boot.  No real point in it.  This is going to be used in ham shack / office / spare room. 

Anyway, works nice but I still have some serious tricking out to do....

 

Thanks for all the replies, suggestions and words of wisdom.  A great bunch of folks here.

[raymac46]

I have a couple of new(ish) PCs that run Windows, but on anything older I just blow it off and install Linux. My Acer desktop ran some version of Windows for 9 years until Wintel wouldn't support it any longer. It's a legacy system but with lots of upgrades over the years. With Mint installed it's a new machine and the grandkids are using it for school. They don't care what O/S they have since mostly they work with Google Workspace.

Dells are usually great Linux candidates but it's worth getting a cheap SSD if you can for the O/S.

[securitybreach]

Well the manufacture really doesn't mean very much as all manufactures use the same internal parts. Dell, HP, Lenovo, etc. do not make hard drives, motherboards, ram, etc. The brands just sell preconfigured hardware sourced from companies that create those components. There are only certain companies that make motherboards, ones that only make video cards, ones that create ram, a couple who make all the harddrives, etc. etc. The computer brands just specify what they want to sell spec wise, source the parts, slap it together and put their name on it. Sort of like car manufactures, phone manufactures, etc. Up until a year or two ago, Samsung was creating all of Apple's screens on their computers and phones.

 

For instance at work, the HP machines have a Samsung NVME drive in them and Quanta, Compal or Inventec motherboards manufactured for HP. The same goes for other computer brands.

 

This link lists the main manufactures for each component in various computer systems: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_computer_hardware_manufacturers