On Saturday 12 April 2014 04.52:21 Calvin Morrison wrote:
> well... Okay here's a longer answer... You could in theory delete
> everything besides your home folder, then install on partition, and
> manually make a user when you're done the  install

Yep, but be aware that if anything goes wrong you WILL loose your data.

You don't say how much space you have or why another drive is no option, but 
having 700 GB of valuable data and no backup... that's dangerous. Hard disk 
do die...

As a side note, I don't understand why people all seem to put all their data 
in the home directory, just to run in this sort of problem. Unless I have a 
very small disc (an SDD on a laptop for example), I start by creating at 
least six partitions: I get two root, two home, one swap and one data 
partition. I ususally use 50 GB for root and 15 GB for home, but smaller si 
possible. On a 1 TB drive, that leaves over 850 GB space for data.

This way, wether I want to try a distribution or upgrade, I can make a full 
new install without distroying my working system, and simply switch the 
default boot once the new install is working.

As Tony said, provided the space is available, you could use gparted to get 
this sort of setup (although your data are at risk when you resize a 
partition too).

Thierry