Resizing and Repartitioning

[n2ize]

I have a new machine with a 1TB drive installed. It has Windblows 7 on it and I also want to put Linux on it. What I might want to do is resize the existing partition (make it smaller) so I can put a Linux partition on it. I've done this before but I'd like to know what are the best free software tools available for doing re partitioning and residing these days ?

[ad4mg]

I have a new machine with a 1TB drive installed. It has Windblows 7 on it and I also want to put Linux on it. What I might want to do is resize the existing partition (make it smaller) so I can put a Linux partition on it. I've done this before but I'd like to know what are the best free software tools available for doing re partitioning and residing these days ?

Download Ubuntu and burn a CD, or make a bootable USB drive. Probably best to grab Ubuntu 10.04 LTS, you won't have to deal with the new Unity desktop, which is initially a little confusing. Boot with it, then run GParted. GParted is simply the easiest, and best free GUI tool to do the job. I've resized dozens of petitions using GParted, never a hitch.

[n2ize]

Download Ubuntu and burn a CD, or make a bootable USB drive. Probably best to grab Ubuntu 10.04 LTS, you won't have to deal with the new Unity desktop, which is initially a little confusing. Boot with it, then run GParted. GParted is simply the easiest, and best free GUI tool to do the job. I've resized dozens of petitions using GParted, never a hitch.

GParted. that was the name I was trying to remember. Thanks.

[kf0rt]

Windblows 7 can shrink a volume too.

Control Panel | Administrative Tools | Computer Management | Disk Management

Right-click on the drive, then click "Shrink Volume"

Easy Peasy. ;)

[ad4mg]

Windblows 7 can shrink a volume too.

Control Panel | Administrative Tools | Computer Management | Disk Management

Right-click on the drive, then click "Shrink Volume"

Easy Peasy. ;)

I find that scary because Windows is constantly reading from and writing to the primary partition. I guess it's fine if you're doing a partition not on the drive with the OS, but I wouldn't take the risk of resizing the primary/boot partition running any kind of software under Windows.

And, before I resize anything, I use Clonezilla to back up the partitions to another drive. Makes it all a very low risk endeavor!

[kf0rt]

Never had a problem, but it's always best to be safe (er, uh, and I don't do this a lot).

Also: good idea to get the machine to make you a Windows install disk first. Most manufacturers don't ship those with the computer any more. The bastids.

[n2ize]

Never had a problem, but it's always best to be safe (er, uh, and I don't do this a lot).

Also: good idea to get the machine to make you a Windows install disk first. Most manufacturers don't ship those with the computer any more. The bastids.

Yep, that is the case. This new system didn't come with any Windblows install disc. Well, actually you can get the install disc but they charge extra for it these days. I definitely want to keep the Windblows 7.0 Pro because I want to make it a dual booter.

Far as software goes I generally run Fedora around here. But GParted will work fine for what I need to do.

BTW this time around I am going to do the full install from a USB drive. This breaks with my near two decade long tradition of installing Linux from DVD Media. It's hard to believe I've been running Linux for nearly that long. I basically went directly from MS. DOS to Red Hat Linux. I remember many people were still running the original version of Windows then and Windows 95 was just coming out. The first system to get Linux was my original 166 Mhz Pentium which, can probably still run. Although I decommissioned it quite a number of years ago I decided to hang onto it for remembrance rather than reefing it.

[KA9MOT]

My first Linux Distro was Mandrake 5.Oh shit I screwed up my computer.... Linux had a pretty steep learning curve with it back then! :lol:

[NQ6U]

Linux had a pretty steep learning curve with it back then! :lol:

Yeah, I remember that. My first distro was an early version of Red Hat and just figuring out the text-based installation process well enough to make it work took a couple of days. It was good that I was using a old computer that I didn't care about because, as I recall, I had to reformat the HDD and reinstall at least half a dozen times before I got it to run.

[K7SGJ]

Never had a problem, but it's always best to be safe (er, uh, and I don't do this a lot).

Also: good idea to get the machine to make you a Windows install disk first. Most manufacturers don't ship those with the computer any more. The bastids.

Yeah, the bastids.

[n2ize]

Yeah, I remember that. My first distro was an early version of Red Hat and just figuring out the text-based installation process well enough to make it work took a couple of days. It was good that I was using a old computer that I didn't care about because, as I recall, I had to reformat the HDD and reinstall at least half a dozen times before I got it to run.

My first Redhat distro was Ora running either an early 1.x kernel some time in the early/mid 1990's. I had no sound support and the only way to get sound was to do a kernel recompile. In those days very few "out of the box" kernels would do what you wanted. A full recompile was almost always necessary. These days I rarely need to compile a kernel. And in those days "configuration" meant editing a file. None of these GUI tools that are around these days. Also, at times, large quantities of caffeine (coffee or jolt) , nicotine, alcohol, or drugs were required to be a successful Linux hacker back then. :twisted:

[n2ize]

BTW I successfully shrank the Windows partition with GParted. I used the ersion included with the Live Debian distro. Now I can start wearing my Fedora

[KA9MOT]

Yeah, I remember that. My first distro was an early version of Red Hat and just figuring out the text-based installation process well enough to make it work took a couple of days. It was good that I was using a old computer that I didn't care about because, as I recall, I had to reformat the HDD and reinstall at least half a dozen times before I got it to run.


Ohhhh My! I never messed with the Text install...... That's scary chit man!

[n2ize]

Ohhhh My! I never messed with the Text install...... That's scary chit man!

First couple of installs I did were text all the way. Fortunately they went pretty smoothly.

[ad4mg]

BTW I successfully shrank the Windows partition with GParted. I used the ersion included with the Live Debian distro. Now I can start wearing my Fedora

Life is good!

[KC2UGV]

Ohhhh My! I never messed with the Text install...... That's scary chit man!

It's not as scary as it sounds.

[n2ize]

I like this new version 16 of Fedora. came bundled with a lot of software right "out of the box" saving me the trouble of having to do a whole lot of extra downloads. A lot of the software that I would normally download and add on came bundled. And a whole bunch of desktops and window managers/ And for the first time everything worked seamlessly. Usually I have to do some bit fiddling to get the sound and video working right, this time it worked flawlessly right "out of the box", no hassles, no problems. Only think I had to add on so far was vlc, xine, and a few video codecs.

I like it so much that I think I am going to add it onto my own system. My own system is currently still on Fedora 12. I think I'll drop in a new drive and put on Fedora 16.

Only major difference is now I have to get used to the new "systemd" method for handling various daemons.

[W1GUH]

Never was a fan of doing *nix and windows on the same disk. Lots do it -- seems to work great if you can get grub straight. And I know you're a guru on the subject, so it may be practically second nature to you.

An alternative is to have separate hard drives for each OS. You're gonna need the room any for programs/user data, big HD's are cheap, and switching OS's is simply swapping the disk.

Or...what I wound up with while I had Ubuntu was *nix was on a usb drive & I used Super Grub to do grub from a CD. Never had to mess with the Windows disk iteslf. The "Super Grub trick" was found by hacking around with no notes.

[n2ize]

Never was a fan of doing *nix and windows on the same disk. Lots do it -- seems to work great if you can get grub straight. And I know you're a guru on the subject, so it may be practically second nature to you.

An alternative is to have separate hard drives for each OS. You're gonna need the room any for programs/user data, big HD's are cheap, and switching OS's is simply swapping the disk.

Or...what I wound up with while I had Ubuntu was *nix was on a usb drive & I used Super Grub to do grub from a CD. Never had to mess with the Windows disk iteslf. The "Super Grub trick" was found by hacking around with no notes.

Normally I do use separate drives for each OS. In other words normally Windows gets its own drive all to itself and Fedora gets its own drive. However, this time I decided to give it a go on one disc since it is a large 1TB disc. Also, on laptops which have room for just one drive I will do the 2 OS's on one.

Also, whenever I install *nix's I always break things up into several partitions rather than run the whole *nix on a single partition. For instance

/ gets its own partition
/home gets its own partition
/usr gets its own parition
/usr/local gets its own partition

and in addition I usually make a /mnt/volume on a separate partition. I use "/mnt/volume" for general storage and miscellaneous junk.

Why so many partitions. When I install a new version or upgrade I tell the installer to leave the partitions containing /home, /mnt/volume, and perhaps /usr/local alone. That way I preserve user data, music, media, and other non-standard material.

[KC2UGV]

Never was a fan of doing *nix and windows on the same disk. Lots do it -- seems to work great if you can get grub straight. And I know you're a guru on the subject, so it may be practically second nature to you.

An alternative is to have separate hard drives for each OS. You're gonna need the room any for programs/user data, big HD's are cheap, and switching OS's is simply swapping the disk.

Or...what I wound up with while I had Ubuntu was *nix was on a usb drive & I used Super Grub to do grub from a CD. Never had to mess with the Windows disk iteslf. The "Super Grub trick" was found by hacking around with no notes.

"Getting GRUB straight"? It auto-configures at install time :)

I mean, it CAN get complicated, if you want to chain boot 4 different flavors of Windows, with a restore partition, on a PGP encrypted drive, including a loop-based linux distro inside of one of the Windows partitions, and finally a full blown stand-alone Linux installation...

But generally, there are 3 boot entries on a dual-boot machine: 0,0 Windows Chainloader; 0,1 /boot/{Normal kernel}; 0,2 /boot/{fail safe kernel}

[n2ize]

.

An alternative is to have separate hard drives for each OS. You're gonna need the room any for programs/user data, big HD's are cheap, and switching OS's is simply swapping the disk.


Even when i use separate drives for each OS I still use GRUB. It's a lot easier just to select Windows or Linux from the GRUB boot prompt than to physically swap drives.

[n2ize]

"Getting GRUB straight"? It auto-configures at install time :)

I mean, it CAN get complicated, if you want to chain boot 4 different flavors of Windows, with a restore partition, on a PGP encrypted drive, including a loop-based linux distro inside of one of the Windows partitions, and finally a full blown stand-alone Linux installation...

But generally, there are 3 boot entries on a dual-boot machine: 0,0 Windows Chainloader; 0,1 /boot/{Normal kernel}; 0,2 /boot/{fail safe kernel}

And before GRUB we had LILO. :)

[KC2UGV]

And before GRUB we had LILO. :)

Now, LILO being a nightmare, I can agree with lol

[n2ize]

Now, LILO being a nightmare, I can agree with lol

I rarely had much trouble with LILO. But then again I used it in a straightforward manner. never had to do anything too complex with LILO.

The main thing about GRUB is that it is far more robust than LILO. GRUB does make it easier to do more complex boot sequences and options.

[W1GUH]

"Getting GRUB straight"? It auto-configures at install time :)

I mean, it CAN get complicated, if you want to chain boot 4 different flavors of Windows, with a restore partition, on a PGP encrypted drive, including a loop-based linux distro inside of one of the Windows partitions, and finally a full blown stand-alone Linux installation...

But generally, there are 3 boot entries on a dual-boot machine: 0,0 Windows Chainloader; 0,1 /boot/{Normal kernel}; 0,2 /boot/{fail safe kernel}

Thanks for the grub info to both you and John. Maybe I over-reacted. But while I was messing with linux someone posted about screwing up grub somehow & going through a major gorilla to restore things, so I sought out ways to avoid possible grub issues. Liked what I came up with by accident -- dunno if I could reproduce it!

Don't think he was attempting something heavy-duty, just adding Ubuntu (IIRC) to his machine.

Thanks again!

[KA9MOT]

Thanks for the grub info to both you and John. Maybe I over-reacted. But while I was messing with linux someone posted about screwing up grub somehow & going through a major gorilla to restore things, so I sought out ways to avoid possible grub issues. Liked what I came up with by accident -- dunno if I could reproduce it!

Don't think he was attempting something heavy-duty, just adding Ubuntu (IIRC) to his machine.

Thanks again!

That was me! :lol:

I had reinstalled Winders7 and it wrote over the MBR eliminating GRUB. Manually installing GRUB turned out to be an easy thing to do. Finding info on how to manually install GRUB was a pain, but I finally found it. And it worked flawlessly.

[W1GUH]

Thanks, Steve. Now I know who to call on when I FU the same way! But I probably won't do *nix except on that $25 thingie if I get one. I've been thinking about setting up my other laptop as a mostly linux machine, but can't think of a single reason to. Not really a hobbyist in that direction - my computer is simply a tool. But Ubuntu WAS fun while I had it and did some clever things that were fun to play with, so maybe in the future...

[KA9MOT]

I saw that $25 thing.......Very interesting. I'll wait for more info before I jump on it but when I do.... I'm thinking Android. Before I jump I have to make sure it is something a not so geeky electronics geek can make work. It really looks bad when you buy shit that you can't figure out and the kid figures it out in 3 minutes.

[KB3LAZ]

I found an easy way to partition. I have more than one HD.

[n2ize]

Thanks, Steve. Now I know who to call on when I FU the same way! But I probably won't do *nix except on that $25 thingie if I get one. I've been thinking about setting up my other laptop as a mostly linux machine, but can't think of a single reason to. Not really a hobbyist in that direction - my computer is simply a tool. But Ubuntu WAS fun while I had it and did some clever things that were fun to play with, so maybe in the future...

Linux is not just for hobbyists and Mathematician/ Physicists /Academics anymore. Lot of people use it as a general purpose OS these days. Even my folks use it for web browsing, multimedia, games, apps, etc.