[SOLVED] Help! I cannot bear Win 8.1 - Installing LL 2.2 on Lenovo U530?

[gold_finger]

Should I consider flashing it before getting started?
These are the two problems this update fixes from the previous version:
-Fix manufacturing process slow download speed issue.
- (Fix) Fixed the issue that bluetooth can't be turned off by setup menu issue.       

Not sure if they seem critical, but I don't know.

If you plan to update the UEFI firmware, might be better to do it now vs. later.  If those issues are not a concern for you then don't worry about it.

Another thing I was wondering: This u530 has a hybrid setup with the 1TB HDD and it's 16GB SSD cache, not even sure where to begin with that yet. I guess just leave the spare SSD alone during the entire defrag and shrinking process?

Yes, just leave it alone.  I have no experience with that type of setup, but shouldn't need to touch the SSD for LL install.

As far as creating the Live USB goes, this machine has no cd drive (seems to be a trend nowadays), so I'll give Unetbootin a shot. I used to create everything with YUMI, but I think it's been deprecated.

Haven't used YUMI myself, but if you prefer that go ahead and try it.  If doesn't work, use UNetbootin.

I've currently got this install setup with an extended partition, home drive separated from the root, and eventually just deleted the swap so now it looks like a strange mess in gparted....

I'd be fine with a similar setup,....

Alright, then we won't bother setting up a "data" partition and just stick to Root, Home.  As long as you don't plan to use hibernate feature and have plenty of RAM available you can skip Swap altogether.  (I usually make a small Swap just in case it's ever needed -- you might want to just do a 1GB Swap.)

On easeus.com I downloaded the Both the "Disk Copy Home" and the "Todo Backup Free" and went on to read their standard tutorial but got confused around this part:

I've never used Easeus myself and am not entirely sure which part you're confused about.  From screenshot message, it seems to just be warning you that once the clone is made you will likely run into problems if both the original drive and the clone are connected when you try booting the computer.  That's because the UEFI firmware will see both drives (as identical) and not know which to boot from, or it may try booting from both, or just get generally confused (I don't know).  That's really all it's saying -- only boot computer with one or the other, not both.  Might be a good idea to disconnect original drive and test out the clone to make sure it works before proceeding.  Then just put original back.

Not sure if I should be using the Todo or just the Disk Copy Home download.

Again, I've never used it myself but from brief description on page it looks like the "EaseUS Disk Copy" version is what you want.  It says it is a "sector-by-sector" 100% identical copy to the original -- that's what you want.

And the Seagate I have is a 3TB, should I partition it and carve out a TB chunk for windows to fit into first before cloning over? Or should I let the program just clone onto a blank/brand new drive?

I've only toyed around with cloning once or twice and only did it for a specific partition, but I believe easiest thing to do would be to just wipe out what's on disk, use GParted to create a fresh GPT partition table on it and then leave it blank (without any partitions).  GParted -> Device -> Create Partition Table -> "gpt"(from drop-down menu) -> OK.  (May not even need to do that, but I'd do it anyway just in case.)  Cloning process will then just create exact duplicates of all partitions on original and (I believe) will leave rest of drive space unpartitioned.  (If I'm wrong about that I'm sure someone will chime in to correct me.)  You should be able to clone other things to that free space later.  BUT ... in that case, I would make a new post asking for advice on how to add new clones to same drive as this one because I'm not sure about best way to do that.  If other drives are using MBR partitions and you try to clone them to the clone drive using GPT partitions, I'm not sure that would work.  I don't know if it is possible to mix partition types on the same drive.  That's something you'll need to find answer to because I suspect your other computers are using MBR partitions.

Another note, when opening up the defrag menu it said all disks were 0% fragmented at the moment, wondering if that gives me a pass or if I should run it anyways?

Sounds like you can skip it and just go ahead with shrinking.


Don't forget to post back with output from "parted -l" command.