preparing a windows machine for dual booting

[Gregory Nowak]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

You need to install ntfsprogs. Then, run ntfs resize to resize the
file system.

Here's how I went about this the few times I did it. There is of
course more than one way, as with so many things.

1. Figure out how small you want the windows partition to be.

2. Make sure you have enough free space on the windows file system
   (E.G. make sure your used space is less than the size of the
   resized partition).

3. Run ntfsresize with a size bigger than your used space in the
   windows file system, but smaller than what you want the resized
   partition to be. Let's say you want to resize the partition to 6
   gigs, and that windows has so far used 3 gigs. Resize the file
   system to 5 gigs in that case.

4. While you could use parted here, I just do things the dangerous?
   shall we say way. I simply run cfdisk, delete the original
   partition, and recreate it with the new size, 6 gigs in this
   case. If you simply delete the partition, and create it again with
   a smaller size, this works fine, and creating a partition with a
   larger size if you want to expand should work fine too. Just make
   sure the new partition starts on the same cylinder as the old,
   which should be the case anyway.

5. Run ntfsresize again, this time letting it enlarge the file system
   to the size of the new underlying partition. You should be all set
   to do whatever you want with the new unpartitioned space now.

Like I said, this is how I do it, and it works for me. This isn't the
only way, and maybe not the best one either. Out of curiosity, from
what I know, you stay as far from windows as possible. If that's
correct, then why aren't you blowing it away entirely in this case?
HTH.

Greg


On Mon, Oct 24, 2011 at 06:55:18AM -0400, Chuck Hallenbeck wrote:
> Hi all,
> 
> The first step in preparing a windows machine for dual booting seems to
> be to resize the partition containing windows to release sufficient disk
> space for the Linux I wish to install.  I assume parted is the tool of
> choice to resize an ntfs partition.  But how do I assure that data are
> not lost in doing so?  What tool will move all the windows data into
> the reduced partition size?
> 
> A few tips would be appreciated, this is new territory for me.
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> --
> Chuck in Hudson.
> _______________________________________________
> Speakup mailing list
> Speakup at braille.uwo.ca
> http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup
> 

- -- 
web site: http://www.romuald.net.eu.org
gpg public key: http://www.romuald.net.eu.org/pubkey.asc
skype: gregn1
(authorization required, add me to your contacts list first)

- --
Free domains: http://www.eu.org/ or mail dns-manager at EU.org
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.10 (GNU/Linux)

iEYEARECAAYFAk6lvDoACgkQ7s9z/XlyUyBGQACeLuCJDcB4pYAvFWs1tSAqRsip
GZgAmwR7d7wq6D+j0LJI3bRpT6lKClyD
=JfBn
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----