Partitioning for Dual Boot With Vista

John Moniz john.moniz-rieW9WUcm8FFJ04o6PK0Fg at public.gmane.org
Wed Jul 23 12:38:00 UTC 2008


Giles Orr wrote:
> 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.  :-)
Thanks Giles. I was under the impression that you had to re-install 
after you partitioned with gparted. I will try the same thing you did.

John.
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