making room for linux

[Kerry Hoath]

It is worth mentioning here that windows 7 does include the tools to 
grow and shrink partitions although it can not move them.
start ->run dismmgmt.msc
then right click the partition and select shrink.

At a wild guess you have a recovery partition, a system partition and 
data partition. If you don't already you'll want NVDA installed to read 
the screen or something else.

You can do all grow/shrink things from the command-line in windows if 
you run diskpart
look on m$ knowledge base for info however stuff like this works:

diskpart

list disk
select disk 1
list partition
select partition 2
shrink size=300G


something to be aware of, Windows 7 will blast your boot loader if you 
reinstall it and it's not as simple as installing the mbr back again as 
it once was as the loader in windows 7 got bigger.
If you install something other than windows 7 loader to mbr, make sure 
you have a way of putting the old stuff back, I usually back up the 
first track with dd.
dd if=/dev/sda count=63 of=track0.img

If you put Linux boot loader in mbr then you can configure that to boot 
windows if desired.
I usually find it best to have at least 1 primary partition for Linux I 
personally make it /boot

regards, Kerry.

On 24/11/2011 2:08 AM, Chuck Hallenbeck wrote:
> My new laptop came with Windows 7 installed on it, and I want to create
> space on the HD to install Linux.  I was expecting Windows to be in
> a single partition, but I find it is spread over three partitions,
> occupying the entire 500 GB disk.
>
> Any tips about how to handle this twist would be appreciated.  I might
> never use windows, but others might, if I can preserve it.
>
> --
> Chuck in Hudson.
> Web address: www.hallenbeck.ftml.net, Messenger JID: chuckh1 at jabber.org
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