Partitioning for Dual Boot With Vista
Giles Orr
gilesorr-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w at public.gmane.org
Wed Jul 23 00:20:16 UTC 2008
2008/7/22 John Moniz <john.moniz-rieW9WUcm8FFJ04o6PK0Fg at public.gmane.org>:
> I just bought a new PC which came with Vista and I want to partition it to
> have mostly Linux space. We had this topic here recently and I recall that
> if the partitioning was done with the Vista partitioner, there should be no
> trouble rebooting Vista. I also recall that Vista may put files far into the
> drive, restricting how much space could be freed.
>
> I have a 500GB drive. I partitioned with the Vista tool and the NTFS
> partition would not go below about 235GB. Truthfully, that leaves me lots of
> space for Linux, more than I ever had. Maybe I'm being a bit of a prick, but
> there's no damn way I want Vista to have half of my drive.
>
> Is there a way to reduce the NTFS partition further without destroying
> Vista? If not, since this PC came with a recovery partition rather than a
> DVD, would I be safe in blowing away Vista, reducing it to something like
> 50GB (maybe 100GB if I'm feeling generous), and recovering Vista again? That
> is, should the recovery program use what's available rather than try (and
> fail) to spread out Vista as before?
I think you're referring to my adventures ... I got a new computer
with Vista and a 320Gb HD. Vista wouldn't admit to being able to
reduce its own space to less that 160GB or so. I did that, and
everything was fine. But then, like you, I got pissed, and I pulled
out a bootable GPartEd disk (I think this is the one I used, although
probably an older version: http://gparted.sourceforge.net/livecd.php).
GPartEd claimed it could reduce Vista to about 60Gb safely, and I
eventually went for 80Gb. Vista got a bit of a panicked look in its
nasty little eyes when I booted it the next time and it bitched that
someone had tampered with it and it would have to fix stuff ... After
about five minutes of plonking about, it was fine. I think Linux
re-partitioning software is pretty damn cautious about NOT lopping off
files, so defrag and give it a try. It's certainly worth a shot if
you're willing to re-install! Just try it first. Good luck.
Of course I think rebooting to make sure Vista was okay three months
ago was the last time I booted Vista. :-)
--
Giles
http://www.gilesorr.com/
gilesorr-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w at public.gmane.org
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