12 Apr
2014
12 Apr
'14
5:15 a.m.
On Saturday 12 April 2014 04.52:21 Calvin Morrison wrote:
well... Okay here's a longer answer... You could
in theory delete
everything besides your home folder, then install on partition, and
manually make a user when you're done the install
Yep, but be aware that if anything goes wrong you WILL loose your data.
You don't say how much space you have or why another drive is no option, but
having 700 GB of valuable data and no backup... that's dangerous. Hard disk
do die...
As a side note, I don't understand why people all seem to put all their data
in the home directory, just to run in this sort of problem. Unless I have a
very small disc (an SDD on a laptop for example), I start by creating at
least six partitions: I get two root, two home, one swap and one data
partition. I ususally use 50 GB for root and 15 GB for home, but smaller si
possible. On a 1 TB drive, that leaves over 850 GB space for data.
This way, wether I want to try a distribution or upgrade, I can make a full
new install without distroying my working system, and simply switch the
default boot once the new install is working.
As Tony said, provided the space is available, you could use gparted to get
this sort of setup (although your data are at risk when you resize a
partition too).
Thierry