Installation guide

CHAPTER 5
Preserving Existing Operating Systems
and User Data
Many Intel based systems are preinstalled with other operating systems such as
MS-DOS, Microsoft Windows, Microsoft Windows NT, OS/2, or some other vendor’s
UNIX
®
implementation. It’s common that the preinstalled operating system uses the
entire disk on the system (on one fdisk partition) and contains data that you don’t
want to lose. Installing the Solaris operating environment on that fdisk partition will
overwrite the current operating system and its associated user data. If you want to
keep an existing operating system on the system and have it co-exist with the Solaris
operating environment, you must create multiple fdisk partitions on the disk.
The following section describes procedures for preserving existing data on a
single-disk system and making the existing operating system co-exist (MS-DOS or
other) with the Solaris operating environment.
How to Preserve Existing Operating Systems and User Data
1. Make sure your existing operating system can co-exist with the Solaris
operating environment.
The following table lists known problems of operating systems co-existing with
the Solaris operating environment. This is not a complete list. Always check the
existing operating system documentation for problems.
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