[Question] can I install zima without wiping the data of my hdd?

[gablilli]

Basically the title, I know that I can use a live version but I prefer installing it on my disk, but without wiping ALL the data (I have like 300gigs of free space, but the others 200gigs are some of my data, so I prefer don't lose it).
Thank you for your answers.

[serycoola]

I am sure this may have a ton of ways it could create other problems, and it is nost definitely not supported by the team, but if you really want, you could do something... BACK UP EVERYTHING OF IMPORTANCE BEFORE PROCEEDING.

Firstly, you will need 2 USB flash drives. Install ZimaOS on one USB drive. Put a live version of a linux distro of your choice on the second USB drive. Boot into that live linux system, open Gnome Disks, and create an IMG file for each and every partition on the ZimaOS USB. Partition your hard drive with the exact same sized partitions as the ones you just created IMGs for. This will only work if your drive was partitioned as GPT when you first formatted it. If your drive is in MBR, you will HAVE TO wipe everything and format it accordingly, which basically defeats the purpose of your question. After this, you have to restore each IMG file onto the corresponding partitions you just created, in the exact same order as they were on the ZimaOS drive. After you are done, and you reboot, your PC should just boot into ZimaOS, or at least you should find it into your boot menu. If that does not happen, go back to your live linux USB, open Gparted and make sure you only have one EFI partition on that drive, that being the ZimaOS one, and it is marked as "boot,efi". If you already had a different OS installed on that drive, it will now become unbootable. It is possible to fix this, but if you don't know how to do that, you should not follow these steps.

Alternatively, a much easier way would be to just move ALL your files to another drive, install ZimaOS and than copy them back onto ZimaOS's DATA partition. Or, you could just buy a cheap SSD and install ZimaOS onto that, and your problem is now fixed.

[LinkLeong]

Thank you very much for your feedback. We understand your desire to install the system on your disk without deleting all your data. Unfortunately, as pointed out by @serycoola , this operation is currently unsupported. We recommend that you follow @serycoola 's advice to explore other solutions to avoid data loss.

Thank you for your understanding and support.