Hi,

I'm trying to install Navigatrix onto my eee 900. The eee has 2 hard disks, a 4gb "boot drive" and a 16gb home drive. The 4gb drive is a faster access drive than the 16gb. Ideally I want to make the 4gb drive the boot drive to load nice and quick and then use the 16gb as my home, but as its only 4gb, the installer will not run.

Is it possible to trim it down to fit on a 4gb drive? (as it installs on a 4gb usb, i assume it might be possible??) And if so, how would I go about it? Would it be possible to install first on the 16gb drive and then copy it over??

Cheers,
Dave

Partitioning and drive layout have a high degree of personal preference.

What you could do during the installation process is do Something Else.

The system doesn't care where 'branches' of the filesystem are located...just as long as they are accessible when required.

...hang on. I'll run a test.

The first test says 4GB is not enough for a Something Else installation of the root. The installer whines that it needs 5.3GB.

However there's more than one way to skin a cat.

The 'easiest' in the short term would be to install on the 16GB, and then manually shift a copy of parts of the filesystem to a new partition (4GB) leaving, e.g., /tmp and /var on the larger drive as they are the ones that tend to change size and could give you grief.

However, it might be easier in the long run to partition the 16GB into, e.g., /home; /tmp; /var...what ever, and do Something Else installing to those partition.

I give it another test.

Nah...it keeps spitting up.

According to the install /usr requires 4.1GB, but if I try to put that on the larger drive, the install thinks it still needs 5.3GB.

Plan "B" would be to migrate filesystems 'branches' after an installation on the 16GB.

e.g., http://www.linuxjournal.com/content/copy-your-linux-install-different-partition-or-drive

or a variant of http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1048874

Plan "C" ...convince yourself you won't notice any speed difference.

thanks a lot Moe, Ill give shifting the folders over. If it doesn't work, Il just run off the 16gb!
Cheers

Yeah, the big deal is the bootloader and /etc/fstab...'cause without them configured correctly the sysyem doesn't know where to go or what filesystem(s) to mount.

Good luck.