Newbie learning here

Community
1

Hello all,

I need help with saving Win7 files and media to my Zorin OS desktop. I have these items on a flash drive as a backup for the Win7. Any suggestions?

2

Is that backup just normal files or some special format?

3

Hi Victoria,
They are normal files like Word, PDF, audio and videos, etc.

4

Then you should be able to simply copy those files from your flash drive into your users home folder using the file manager, right?

Have you encountered an issue during this process?

5

I’m not sure how to do that.

6

On Linux, open the file manager. Then plug in the flash drive into your computer. Then you should be able to open your flash drive in the file manager and be able to copy the files from it to your home folder.

Not really more complicated than that?

To be quite frank, I’m not entirely sure what’s the issue here is. If you have issues it could help to give more details, so we can better understand the situation and help.

7

See

8

Ok, I’m getting started with copying files with the file Mgr. But I’m running out of space very quickly! The zorin properties shows 1.1 Gb taken and only 108 Mb free…and I’ve only copied very little.
Thx

9

Hi Sophie,
Ok, I’m getting started with copying files with the file Mgr. But I’m running out of space very quickly! The zorin properties shows 1.1 Gb taken and only 108 Mb free…and I’ve only copied very little.
I’m running the Zorin from an 8 Gb flash drive but can’t see it’s properties for some reason.

James Sent from for Android.Sent from for Android.

10

So, the issue you’re having is that you have very few space on your Linux system then?

This opens a few questions:

  • How much space does your computer normally have?
  • How do you run Zorin OS?
  • Do you still have Windows running on your computer?
    • If so, did you set some settings about the disk usage during the installation of Zorin?

It would also help to get a view of how the disks on your system are partitioned.

So, if possible:

  • Open the program “Terminal” on your Linux system
  • Type into the terminal the command lsblk
  • Select all text that is generated by it
  • Copy it by right-click and selecting “Copy”
  • Paste us the text in your comment, with ``` above and below it (this will format it as code in Discourse)
11

I’m running the zorin from an 8Gb flashdrive only, not installed. Win7 is still running I think. Here is the text from the partition check:

‘‘‘

NAME MAJ:MIN RM SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINTS
loop0 7:0 0 2.7G 1 loop /rofs
sda 8:0 0 465.8G 0 disk
├─sda1 8:1 0 100M 0 part
├─sda2 8:2 0 241.3G 0 part
├─sda3 8:3 0 1K 0 part
├─sda5 8:5 0 201.8G 0 part
└─sda6 8:6 0 7.9G 0 part
sdb 8:16 1 7.3G 0 disk
├─sdb1 8:17 1 7.2G 0 part
│ ├─ventoy 252:0 0 3.5G 1 dm /cdrom
│ └─sdb1 252:1 0 7.2G 0 dm
└─sdb2 8:18 1 32M 0 part
sdc 8:32 1 28.8G 0 disk
└─sdc1 8:33 1 28.8G 0 part /media/zorin/KINGSTON
sr0 11:0 1 1024M 0 rom
zorin@zorin:~$

‘‘‘

12

Right, so that’s your issue.

The live installation on the USB stick uses a temporary file system, which is only as big as it needs to be. After all, the live installation is primarily intended to be used to try out a system and to then install it.

So, you should install the system to a drive with an appropriate amount of space, ideally the hard drive of your computer.

13

OK, that sounds doable. Would you recommend doing a partition on the laptop drive? Thx for your time amigo.

14

Yes, I would recommend installing it onto an internal drive.
An installation on an removable drive is technically possible, but external drives are often slow and this can also cause issues with the bootloader.

So, I would make a partition on your laptop drive for Zorin OS. You install the root filesystem onto that new partition and the bootloader to the bootloader partition that already exists.

15

Well, I let it pick it’s own location for the install, without partitioning the drive. Was this a bad idea?

16

Normally it should be fine. As far as I know the installer of Ubuntu, on which Zorin OS is based, is smart enough to make existing partitions smaller to fit its new onto the disk.

That being said, I’m a bit curious about the timing.
Did you already tried to install Zorin OS before?

Because if we look back at the partition table you posted earlier, you can see two big partitions on /dev/sda. If what you’ve described just now happened before you posted the partition table, you might have already installed Zorin OS on your laptops drive?

So, this is just a guess, but sometimes the BIOS sets the external drives as priority to boot. So, maybe your system always boots you to the installer drive, instead to the installed system.
On the other hand, given the time between your posts, that would mean you have left the installer drive in for a few days, so maybe its not the right guess…