Hard Disk Partitioning

[airnayden]

Hello!

Until now I have had no problems installing any linux on my PC. I usually make a dual boot (win/linux).

Couple of months ago I bought a new laptop and installed windows 8. My HDD is 1tb and was splitted into couple of partitions. Today I decided to install Kali Linux as a secondary OS and here's what I did:

1. Opened windows in-built partition manager
2. shrinked a partition so I can make free space for the new os
3. saved the changes, reboot, boot from DVD
4. launched the non-graphic installer and when I got to the partition manager I saw that my newly created partition was not listed(I saw all my partitions but with their old structure and the new partition missing)

I made a quick research and decided to convert from dynamic to basic partition types. Then I created again a new partition in ext3 filesystem.
Boot from the DVD again but this time it was worse - all I saw in the linux partition manager was the Whole Hard drive( no partitions shown). For the protocol i'm using MBR, not GPT.

So my question is: what should I do in order to install Kali as a secondary OS in my case?

Thanks a lot!

[staticn0de]

Hi there,

First things first. Can you still boot into windows?

From within windows, if you access the disk management tool does it display the 1TB drive with the several windows partitions and free space? (it won't display the ext3 partition)

If the disk management tool has what is expected for Windows, you can make free space (delete any partition you have made for linux) and just leave it as unpartitioned and unformated.

Boot the Kali installer when you rearch the partition screen, select manual partition.

The list will show XXGB of free space. It should match the size of free space left over in windows. Take the total amount avalible and then minus your RAM installed x 2. So I have 4GB of RAM (4096MB) so I would minus 8096 (or 8GB) from the total avalible.

Assuming I have 124GB avalible and I minus my 8GB I have 116GB left for my main partition.

So, create a partition following the last windows partiton with a size of 116GB. Set the file system type as Ext4 and the mount point as '/'. Select format this partiton and then 'done setting up this partition'

Create another partition in the 8096MB (or your value) following the one just made. This will be type 'swap' (or linux-swap, I can't remember) and then select 'done setting up this partiton' and then finish by selecting 'write changes to disk'

It should install and boot kali on reboot. If Windows is not in grub, when Kali boots run 'update-grub' from temrinal.

I'm not sure if the dynamic partiton is a problem, but if it made it worse it may be a good idea to change it back.