First thing to do is make a
BACKUP of all critical data. I know I keep on about it but if on the really rare occasion things do go wrong. It stops all the weeping, wailing and gnashing of teeth or even worse - having to explain to your significant other how all the wedding and honeymoon pictures and all the really special ones of the kids growing up are gone for ever
!! You get the picture!
I am assuming that you are either using GParted from the LiveDVD/USB or an independent GParted installation. Open GParted by selecting
Menu>System Tools>GParted. When GParted has opened you will see a visual representation of your
HDD/SSD. In your case there will be one partition occupying the whole of
HDD/SSD. You are now going to queue the actions you want GParted to perform.
NOTHING becomes permanent until you select,
Apply All Operations.
Right click the Windows partition and select "
unmount" if the partition is mounted. Next, select
"Resize/Move". A new window will open up. Hover the cursor over the right end of the block until you see a double ended arrow. You will now be able to drag the bar to the left. This leaves an empty space behind. This is the space you are going to use for Peppermint. Alternatively, you could manually input the size you want in the box labeled,
Free space following (MiB):. A good universal converter is
WolframAlfa:
http://www.wolframalpha.com/ .
Once you've decided on the size you want, select, "
Resize/Move". You will now see that the Windows partition has shrunk leaving an unallocated space behind, (remember, this isn't permanent, you havent selected
Apply All Operations).
To format the unallocated space:Right click on the grey unallocated space and select,
new. A new window will open. Select
Primary Partition and format the filesystem to"
ext4". Label it
/. The forward slash represents
root. Again drag the right end of the block so that the new size is ideally around 15 - 20GB, (15,360MiB - 20,480MiB). Click
Add. You will see your new edit as a new partition with a
blue border.
Right click on the grey unallocated space and select new. A new window will open. Select
Primary Partition and format the filesystem to
ext4. Label it
/home. Fill in the box labeled:
Free space following (MiB): with twice the value of your RAM in MIBs. Click
Add. You will again see your new edit as a new partition with a
blue border.
Right click on the remaining grey unallocated space and select new. A new window will open. Select
Primary Partition and format the filesystem to
linux-swap Label it
swap and click
Add. You will again see your new edit as a new partition with a
brown border. Easy eh
!
We are at crunch time. Lets review. There is the Windows partition, Then three partitions to be used by Peppermint.
/,
/home and
swap. Ill ask one more time. Have you
BACKED UP?
Hover your cursor over the return symbol near
Help in the task bar. Click on this. You will have a finally warning about the risks of this operation. We can ignore this because you have made a
BACKUP. Click
Apply. Now make a cup of coffee and wait as it can take some time.
Once that has completed you will see your new representation of your partition table. Exit GParted and Peppermint Five. Boot into Windows to check functionality.
To Install Peppermint Five Beside Windows.
Shutdown Windows and boot into Peppermint Five Live. Double click on the,
Install Peppermint 5. Select your language and click
Continue.
Check the,
Download updates while installing and
Install this third-party software or you can download these later. It depends on your internet connection and your computer's speed. Click
Continue.
A new screen will appear titled, "
Installation type. Select,
Something else.
A new screen will appear titled,
Installation type. This is very important you get right. In the window you will see your partitions. One will be for Window. Double click on this partition.
A new small window will open. Select,
do not use this partition and make sure the,
Format the partition box is
greyed out and
unchecked. If for any reason it isnt like this.
DO NOT PROCEED. Now double check everything. If it is okay, click
OK.Double click on the
ext4 partition used for root. (hint: it will be the smaller of the two ext4 partitions). Select in,
Use as:
Ext4 journaling file system. Leave the,
Format the partition unchecked. Select in,
Mount point
/. Click
Apply. You will receive a warning about formating the partition. This can be ignored because this has been done in GParted. Move on to the next ext4 partition and repeat the process. Only this time select in,
Mount point /home. Click apply.
The next partition is,
swap and you need not do anything to this.
Where to install the boot loader? Under the, Device for boot loader installation: you will see something like,
/dev/sdc ATA WDC WD7500BPVX-2 (750.GB).
Important. If your
/ partition looks like,
/dev/sda1". The boot loader must be installed to, MBR
/dev/sda. If it is,
/dev/sdb1. The boot loader must be installed to , MBR
/dev/sdb" etc. Once youve done that, hit install and go and make another cup of coffee. After the installation has finished, Reboot, change your BIOS boot order back to your HDD/SSD to the top. You see the boot loader screen where you can select Peppermint Five or Windows 7. I hope this helps - have fun
!
