On Sat, Mar 26, 2011 at 04:52:54PM +0000, Sebastian Tennant wrote: > Quoth Piscium <[email protected]>: > > What version of Windows do you have? > > Windows 7. > > > I remember reading a while back that resizing Windows Vista partitions with > > Gparted can make it unbootable (XP should be fine though). Not sure if that > > is still the case, or what is the deal for Windows 7. > > Funny, I just read something similar. As a result I thought I'd try resizing > using Windows' own disk tool and this is what it tells me: > > "You cannot shrink a volume beyond the point where any unmovable files are > located." > > Total size before shrink: 431938 MB > Size of available shrink space: 201358 MB > Total size after shrink: 230580 MB > > Can you believe it!
The Minitool Partition Wizard live CD can move "unmovable files" and handles other details to be able to shrink a Windows partition. It's free, very slick, and Linux under the hood. I did this for Windows 7 (on a recent Thinkpad) It is occasionally convenient to be able to verify that hardware works under windows. I'm not sure if you need to, but I turned off Windows paging before the shrink. > The 35 GB of data actually on the disk is somehow distributed over 230 GB of > disk space in such a way that none of the remaining 195 GB of empty space can > be used for anything else. How brain-damaged is that! > > I'm actually wondering whether or not I should bother keeping Windows now. > > > Usually it is recommended to put swap towards the beginning of the disk as > > disk access is faster. 4 GB may be excessive, I have 3 GB swap in mine and I > > don't remember ever using more than 100 MB. > > Thanks for the tip. I'll set aside 2 GB nearer the start of the disk. > > > Grub does not "overwrite the existing Windows bootloader" rather it > > overwrites the MBR which in your case points to the Windows boot loader. > > Ah... and the Windows bootloader resides on the Windows boot partition. I > see. > Thanks for correcting my thinko. > > > Anyway, the combination of Grub2 + os-prober works reliably so I > > wouldn't expect and issue. > > That's good to know. > > > You need the Windows CD that came with your PC, > > No such thing, but I've made a Windows 'rescue disk'. > > > set your BIOS to boot from CD. > > Already done that. > > > After you boot from the Windows CD you go in Windows command mode (that is > > no > > graphical interface), I think you need to choose a rescue option. There is a > > command to restore the MBR so that it makes it point again to the Windows > > boot loader. I forgot what it is but should be easy for you to google > > it. After you run the command you reboot normally (without the CD) and it > > goes into Windows. > > Thanks very much. This is just what I needed to know. > > Seb > -- > Emacs' AlsaPlayer - Music Without Jolts > Lightweight, full-featured and mindful of your idyllic happiness. > http://home.gna.org/eap > > > _______________________________________________ > Help-grub mailing list > [email protected] > http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/help-grub -- Joel Roth _______________________________________________ Help-grub mailing list [email protected] http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/help-grub
