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On 11/09/12 12:02, Henry Bremridge wrote: > I have a new laptop (Samsung from PC World) and am not enjoying Windows. > From reading on the web (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VpipA-_3nSs), I > assume that the best way to getting back to Debian is: > 1) Set up partition from within Windows > 2) Install Debian live and then follow the instructions as normal. Or is a > debian netinst fine. > > Given that > a) I would like whole disk encryption for my debian data (client data) and > I intend to back up every night to an external hardrive > b) I have spent hours getting Windows updated and I do not want to use > system restore on windows > > Does anyone have any suggestions? > This and Steven's suggestions are mostly fine: you however do *not* want to perform partition resizing from within windows (it may not even be possible depending on the type of partition, i.e., dynamic vs simple volume) especially if you have one single boot volume (200Mb 'loader' partition + the rest of the disk as your NTFS data partition). Partitioning secondary or tertiary non-OS disks from within windows is fine however. You will be best served by obtaining the gparted live CD and booting from that to initially resize your windows partition. This will make windows panic initially after the resize operation and it will want to run a chkdisk on your first boot afterwards. You must let this complete. Steven is not necessarily correct that you will not have to defrag windows first: this is a random thing, depending on how heavily windows has been used. Frequently, shrinking the windows partition will be limited because windows has written non-reassignable data blocks to certain sectors of your disk which parted/fdisk can not work around. Bittorrent programs are the biggest cause of this due to their heavy and random disk thrashing. Just attempt your resize first and if gparted will not let you assign as much space as you want, you will have to install a third party program or use a NTFS defrag tool from a live CD/USB to shift the offending data to the start of the disk. 9 times out of 10 the debian installer will handle this perfectly, the above advice is only applicable if you are unlucky. Personally, I like to get things right first time so I always handle retrospective dual booting setups this way (it has never failed me in hundreds if not thousands of installs). I always use the netinst disk personally, but as Steven suggested, this is largely dependent on your personal preference and your internet connection. You are correct to avoid System Restore, it is an unspeakably useless piece of crap and should always be deactivated immediately on windows. Debian handles full disk encryption very elegantly, and you should definitely implement it on a laptop (easily lost or stolen if you carry it around with you). The partitioner will guide you through setting up the LUKS volumes and the encryption. I take it I don't really need to tell you why you should encrypt the entire system rather than just your home partition? If you want to also encrypt the windows partition then your main options are bitlocker (if your hardware/windows version support it - it's not available in home versions for example) or Truecrypt, which is better, but is tricky to set up on a single disk dual boot system as the debian grub bootloader and the Truecrypt bootloader will fight for control of the MBR. It's possible, just inconvenient. Personally I would advise getting rid of windows altogether or doing a P2V conversion and relegating the windows system to a virtual machine, where it belongs. If you're sensible, before mucking around too much with complicated bootloader configurations back up your MBR with "dd if=/dev/sda of=/my.mbr.bak bs=512 count=1" so that you can restore it if necessary. Good luck. Regards -- The Mailing List for the Devon & Cornwall LUG http://mailman.dclug.org.uk/listinfo/list FAQ: http://www.dcglug.org.uk/listfaq