HOW TO INSTALL LINUX IN A PARTITION WITHOUT LOSING DATA ON THE OTHER PARTITIONS

[Madsyrn]

i want to install linux mint on my pc with windows 10. I want linux to be on a partition on my hard drive without losing any data on the hdd, is there any way to install it through windows with some ext4 software? there no where else i can keep that data there is no space on my ssd and my internet is not good enough to handle 500gb of data.

[Murasaki]

You can either shrink the volume on your HDD through Windows' Disk Managment to create space for the linux install or partition it during Mint's installation.

[Madsyrn]

does it appear? i tried ubuntu before it didnt work.

[Madsyrn]

you mean free space? or unallocated space?

[Applefreak]

13 minutes ago, Madsyrn said:

i want to install linux mint on my pc with windows 10. I want linux to be on a partition on my hard drive without losing any data on the hdd, is there any way to install it through windows with some ext4 software? there no where else i can keep that data there is no space on my ssd and my internet is not good enough to handle 500gb of data.

Resizing an active partition in Windows is not a good idea unless you have backed everything up first. Once you've made a partition, you would then need an optical drive with a disc or a thumb drive with the installer on it and boot off it. Then the guided setup would let you install Linux Mint on that secondary partition. By default Linux will install the GRUB bootloader, which will load up first. You then can select the windows boot loader from the menu to start back into your regular Windows environment. No data loss whatsoever. But as I mentioned, partitioning a drive with data on it is risky. If you need Linux for some experiments, a cheap external HDD or a slightly faster thumb drive would work as well as a short term solution without needing to re-partiton or format any of your precious drives.

[Murasaki]

1 minute ago, Madsyrn said:

you mean free space? or unallocated space?

Unallocated. In Disk Managment rightclick on your HDD's partition and Shrink it by the amount of space you want for the Linux install. Shrinking volumes does not lose any data. That's all you need to do in WIndows. You now have unallocated space you can use to install Linux.

Spoiler

Spoiler

 

[Madsyrn]

ok

 

[Guidosaurus-Rex]

On 4/8/2023 at 4:31 AM, Murasaki said:

You can either shrink the volume on your HDD through Windows' Disk Managment to create space for the linux install or partition it during Mint's installation.

You should be able to resize the partition from the live environment as well.  Launch GParted and select your drive.  Then select "Resize/Move" and you can reduce the size of the windows partition. The remaining space can then be formatted and then you can install Mint.