Re: Best way to shrink Windows on new laptop?
On 31/01/07, Andrew Sackville-West [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Wed, Jan 31, 2007 at 09:41:07PM +, Anthony Campbell wrote: On 31 Jan 2007, Andrew Sackville-West wrote: On Wed, Jan 31, 2007 at 04:15:25PM +, Anthony Campbell wrote: On 31 Jan 2007, Anthony Campbell wrote: I failed to resize the Windows partition (Windows XP) with both the Debian installer disk and qparted. They appeared to work but at the end the partition was still the same size. Hi, I have used (several times) a Gnome gparted boot disc (iso's freely available- just google) on my company laptop and other machines. This is very impressive, easy and quick. HTH Terence -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Best way to shrink Windows on new laptop?
On 01 Feb 2007, Terence wrote: On 31/01/07, Andrew Sackville-West [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Wed, Jan 31, 2007 at 09:41:07PM +, Anthony Campbell wrote: On 31 Jan 2007, Andrew Sackville-West wrote: On Wed, Jan 31, 2007 at 04:15:25PM +, Anthony Campbell wrote: On 31 Jan 2007, Anthony Campbell wrote: I failed to resize the Windows partition (Windows XP) with both the Debian installer disk and qparted. They appeared to work but at the end the partition was still the same size. Hi, I have used (several times) a Gnome gparted boot disc (iso's freely available- just google) on my company laptop and other machines. This is very impressive, easy and quick. HTH Terence Already tried it; the resize option came up but the button to make it actually do the job was greyed out. Anthony -- Anthony Campbell - [EMAIL PROTECTED] Microsoft-free zone - Using Linux Gnu-Debian http://www.acampbell.org.uk (blog, book reviews, on-line books and sceptical articles) -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Best way to shrink Windows on new laptop?
On 31 Jan 2007, Andrew Sackville-West wrote: On Wed, Jan 31, 2007 at 09:41:07PM +, Anthony Campbell wrote: On 31 Jan 2007, Andrew Sackville-West wrote: On Wed, Jan 31, 2007 at 04:15:25PM +, Anthony Campbell wrote: On 31 Jan 2007, Anthony Campbell wrote: I failed to resize the Windows partition (Windows XP) with both the Debian installer disk and qparted. They appeared to work but at the end the partition was still the same size. [...] As I remember the process, you select the ntfs partition, resize it (it will prompt you with the minimum size), wait wait wait, and then you are presented with a new partitioning screen with lovely free space. How did your experience differ? A Nothing at all seemed to happen with the Debian installer. details here would help. my memory is that you select the partition, and press enter (doing this from memory here...), select resize, enter the size and away you go. This what I did. There was a prolonged pause, and then the original screen came up; the disk size was the same as before. So I tried with ntfsresize from Knoppix. This completed satisfactorily but the partition was still the same size. It said I was next supposed to delete and remake the partition with cfdisk, which I did. It was now the correct size and type but Windows would no longer start. yeah, probably the cfdisking confused its boot. what exactly happened with the windows boot? nothing at all? or did it try to come up and fail? Yes, it tried to boot but failed, and then I was offered various alternatives such as reverting to an earlier instance of Windows, booting in command mode and other stuff; none of these worked. The documentation for ntfsresize does tell you to use cfdisk or fdisk to delete and restore the partion, but it still seems odd to me. you are correct in that ntfsresize *just* resizes the file system and not the partition. Knoppix includes other partitioners. I've used qtparted with success. It will call ntfsresize as needed. you might try that. I've done it from Knoppix, Ubuntu, and Gparted Live, without success. Anthony -- Anthony Campbell - [EMAIL PROTECTED] Microsoft-free zone - Using Linux Gnu-Debian http://www.acampbell.org.uk (blog, book reviews, on-line books and sceptical articles) -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Best way to shrink Windows on new laptop? -SOLVED
On 01 Feb 2007, Anthony Campbell wrote: Well, it worked this time. I did ntfsresize (from Knoppix); then cfdisk to resize the disk to 11,000 MB with NTFS file type. When I rebooted, Windows again failed to start and I got the rescue stuff. However, instead of giving up and reinstalling Windows as I did last time, I just exited the Rescue page and this time Windows ran chkdsk and then started up. What may have made a difference (I'm not sure) is that I also made a temporary partition occupying all the blank disk apart from the resized Windows partition and the reserved partition. Anthony -- Anthony Campbell - [EMAIL PROTECTED] Microsoft-free zone - Using Linux Gnu-Debian http://www.acampbell.org.uk (blog, book reviews, on-line books and sceptical articles) -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Best way to shrink Windows on new laptop? -SOLVED
On Thu, Feb 01, 2007 at 09:34:03AM +, Anthony Campbell wrote: On 01 Feb 2007, Anthony Campbell wrote: Well, it worked this time. I did ntfsresize (from Knoppix); then cfdisk to resize the disk to 11,000 MB with NTFS file type. When I rebooted, Windows again failed to start and I got the rescue stuff. However, instead of giving up and reinstalling Windows as I did last time, I just exited the Rescue page and this time Windows ran chkdsk and then started up. What may have made a difference (I'm not sure) is that I also made a temporary partition occupying all the blank disk apart from the resized Windows partition and the reserved partition. well wierd, but glad it worked for you. Sounds like there might have been something different in your windows setup. A signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Best way to shrink Windows on new laptop?
On 30 Jan 2007, Paul Johnson wrote: Anthony Campbell wrote: I'm getting a new Thinkpad Z61M and shall be installing Debian (naturally!). When I last did this on a Thinkpad a couple of years ago I just deleted the Windows partition completely, but I have found, *very* rarely, that I needed it. I'd therefore like to keep Windows, at least for the moment, so I'll need to shrink its partition. Two questions: a. How small could its partition be? Would 10 GB be enough, or too much? 10GB is probably a good number for Windows except Vista which requires something like 13GB(!) just to get it out of the box. b. 3.5: If I understand the Debian Installation manual correctly, I can do this by simply selecting a different size for the partition during the installation process. If your machine has a FAT or NTFS filesystem, as used by DOS and Windows, you can wait and use Debian installer's partitioning program to resize the filesystem. Won't this destroy all the Windows stuff? Potentially. Always keep a backup. You might also find http://www.goodbye-microsoft.com/ to be handy. Thanks to all who've replied with lots of useful information. Looking forward to putting it all into effect ... Anthony -- Anthony Campbell - [EMAIL PROTECTED] Microsoft-free zone - Using Linux Gnu-Debian http://www.acampbell.org.uk (blog, book reviews, on-line books and sceptical articles) -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Best way to shrink Windows on new laptop?
On 31 Jan 2007, Anthony Campbell wrote: I failed to resize the Windows partition (Windows XP) with both the Debian installer disk and qparted. They appeared to work but at the end the partition was still the same size. If I delete the partition and then make a new one (HPFS/NTFS with cfdisk, will I be able to install Windows from the backup sector of the hard disk? I know nothing about Windows so I don't have any idea if I can do that. Anthony -- Anthony Campbell - [EMAIL PROTECTED] Microsoft-free zone - Using Linux Gnu-Debian http://www.acampbell.org.uk (blog, book reviews, on-line books and sceptical articles) -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Best way to shrink Windows on new laptop?
Anthony Campbell wrote: On 31 Jan 2007, Anthony Campbell wrote: I failed to resize the Windows partition (Windows XP) with both the Debian installer disk and qparted. They appeared to work but at the end the partition was still the same size. I recently did this on a new dell laptop, but used Knoppix from the CLI. ntfsresize resized the file system then cfdisk to delete the partition and recreate it at the same starting point, but with the revised size. I think this is what the d-i and qparted use, but this method worked for me and you can see what is happening. Maybe they resized the file system but not the partition? If I delete the partition and then make a new one (HPFS/NTFS with cfdisk, will I be able to install Windows from the backup sector of the hard disk? I know nothing about Windows so I don't have any idea if I can do that. Possibly, depends on how you get there, i.e. BIOS or MBR, the MBR may well get overwritten and you could be left without the rescue option. Anthony HTH Wackojacko -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Best way to shrink Windows on new laptop?
On Wednesday 31 January 2007 17:15, Anthony Campbell wrote: On 31 Jan 2007, Anthony Campbell wrote: I failed to resize the Windows partition (Windows XP) with both the Debian installer disk and qparted. They appeared to work but at the end the partition was still the same size. I recently needed to find some more harddrive space. The only drive that had some was the original drive that came with the machine with XP on it. Q, or was it Qtparted on the Knoppix disc wouldn't detect the disc with XP on it, although it did detect the fixed harddive which now has a mix of NTFS, and FAT partitions. I dl'd the gparted live cd from sourceforge, and this worked first go. XP (NTFS) on the 40GB drive was reduced to 12GB. XP was taking up IIRC 8.3GB, but I set it to 12GB as after doing a defrag on XP it showed some immovable files, with a bunch of free space inbetween. I also deactivated XP's system-restore in case that might cause any problems with the resizing. http://gparted.sourceforge.net/livecd.php And info how to use it. http://gparted.sourceforge.net/larry/resize/resizing.htm As I said it worked first go, and gave me 28GB of freespace, which now has Kubuntu, and FC5 using it up. The only problem I had was that Kubuntu didn't ask for a swap partition, and when I installed FC5, I created a / partition, then a /home, but it wouldn't create a swap. I removed the /home partition, then the swap created ok, but then I couldn't create the /home partition. There were complaints about the partitioning. I removed the swap, recreated the /home, and left it without a swap. There is 1GB RAM on the machine, so it isn't really a problem. Just a bit of rambling info if it's of any use. Hope you get it resized. Nigel. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Best way to shrink Windows on new laptop?
Kent West wrote: I'm unfamiliar with a resizing option in the Debian installer (but then, I don't install it very often). You can use parted/QParted to (more-or-less safely) resize a partition. Yes, and d-i _uses_ parted to do its resizing. -- see shy jo signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Best way to shrink Windows on new laptop?
On Wed, Jan 31, 2007 at 04:15:25PM +, Anthony Campbell wrote: On 31 Jan 2007, Anthony Campbell wrote: I failed to resize the Windows partition (Windows XP) with both the Debian installer disk and qparted. They appeared to work but at the end the partition was still the same size. what exactly did it say? I've done this twice now very recently (using both sarge and etch installers) with 0 problems. It resized the partition smooth as could be (though it takes a while). It used to be that there were parts of the fs that were not moveable (swap files, essentially) and you had to turn off windows virtual memory and maybe do a defrag to get it to work, but I think those issues are all solved now. As I remember the process, you select the ntfs partition, resize it (it will prompt you with the minimum size), wait wait wait, and then you are presented with a new partitioning screen with lovely free space. How did your experience differ? A signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Best way to shrink Windows on new laptop?
On 31 Jan 2007, Andrew Sackville-West wrote: On Wed, Jan 31, 2007 at 04:15:25PM +, Anthony Campbell wrote: On 31 Jan 2007, Anthony Campbell wrote: I failed to resize the Windows partition (Windows XP) with both the Debian installer disk and qparted. They appeared to work but at the end the partition was still the same size. what exactly did it say? I've done this twice now very recently (using both sarge and etch installers) with 0 problems. It resized the partition smooth as could be (though it takes a while). It used to be that there were parts of the fs that were not moveable (swap files, essentially) and you had to turn off windows virtual memory and maybe do a defrag to get it to work, but I think those issues are all solved now. As I remember the process, you select the ntfs partition, resize it (it will prompt you with the minimum size), wait wait wait, and then you are presented with a new partitioning screen with lovely free space. How did your experience differ? A Nothing at all seemed to happen with the Debian installer. So I tried with ntfsresize from Knoppix. This completed satisfactorily but the partition was still the same size. It said I was next supposed to delete and remake the partition with cfdisk, which I did. It was now the correct size and type but Windows would no longer start. So I restored Windows from the restore compartment and it's working again, but of course it's now occupying the whole disk as before. I don't really understand how cfdisk is supposed to work with ntfsresize. Perhaps I misunderstood the instructions. But I may have to give up and just delete Windows completely. AC -- Anthony Campbell - [EMAIL PROTECTED] Microsoft-free zone - Using Linux Gnu-Debian http://www.acampbell.org.uk (blog, book reviews, on-line books and sceptical articles) -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Best way to shrink Windows on new laptop?
On Wed, Jan 31, 2007 at 09:41:07PM +, Anthony Campbell wrote: On 31 Jan 2007, Andrew Sackville-West wrote: On Wed, Jan 31, 2007 at 04:15:25PM +, Anthony Campbell wrote: On 31 Jan 2007, Anthony Campbell wrote: I failed to resize the Windows partition (Windows XP) with both the Debian installer disk and qparted. They appeared to work but at the end the partition was still the same size. [...] As I remember the process, you select the ntfs partition, resize it (it will prompt you with the minimum size), wait wait wait, and then you are presented with a new partitioning screen with lovely free space. How did your experience differ? A Nothing at all seemed to happen with the Debian installer. details here would help. my memory is that you select the partition, and press enter (doing this from memory here...), select resize, enter the size and away you go. So I tried with ntfsresize from Knoppix. This completed satisfactorily but the partition was still the same size. It said I was next supposed to delete and remake the partition with cfdisk, which I did. It was now the correct size and type but Windows would no longer start. yeah, probably the cfdisking confused its boot. what exactly happened with the windows boot? nothing at all? or did it try to come up and fail? you are correct in that ntfsresize *just* resizes the file system and not the partition. Knoppix includes other partitioners. I've used qtparted with success. It will call ntfsresize as needed. you might try that. So I restored Windows from the restore compartment and it's working again, but of course it's now occupying the whole disk as before. I don't really understand how cfdisk is supposed to work with ntfsresize. Perhaps I misunderstood the instructions. But I may have to give up and just delete Windows completely. --- well this is obviously the best solution... ;-) A signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Best way to shrink Windows on new laptop?
On Tue, 2007-01-30 at 14:05 +, Anthony Campbell wrote: I'm getting a new Thinkpad Z61M and shall be installing Debian (naturally!). When I last did this on a Thinkpad a couple of years ago I just deleted the Windows partition completely, but I have found, *very* rarely, that I needed it. I'd therefore like to keep Windows, at least for the moment, so I'll need to shrink its partition. Two questions: a. How small could its partition be? Would 10 GB be enough, or too much? That's definitely enough and prob a good place to start. From experience 3Gb isn't enough. (I'm talking for XP Pro - it may depend a bit on which version and what you install.) b. 3.5: If I understand the Debian Installation manual correctly, I can do this by simply selecting a different size for the partition during the installation process. If your machine has a FAT or NTFS filesystem, as used by DOS and Windows, you can wait and use Debian installer's partitioning program to resize the filesystem. Won't this destroy all the Windows stuff? No, the partition editors are clever enough to shrink partitions without deleting files (so you can always install/use XP and then shrink to whatever at a later date - although this may mean a small-ish /whatever partition for Linux). But you are always warned to backup important data first. Just don't use the WinXP setup disk to create/amend partitions - you may end up in a real mess (I did! see previous entries on this mailing list). Michael -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Best way to shrink Windows on new laptop?
Anthony Campbell wrote: I'm getting a new Thinkpad Z61M and shall be installing Debian (naturally!). I'd therefore like to keep Windows, at least for the moment, so I'll need to shrink its partition. Two questions: a. How small could its partition be? Would 10 GB be enough, or too much? 10 sounds about right; if it's only Windows, you can get by with less. If it includes a standard set of apps, ten is about right. If it includes large apps or many profiles or large profiles (with A/V files, etc), you'll need more. b. 3.5: If I understand the Debian Installation manual correctly, I can do this by simply selecting a different size for the partition during the installation process. If your machine has a FAT or NTFS filesystem, as used by DOS and Windows, you can wait and use Debian installer's partitioning program to resize the filesystem. Won't this destroy all the Windows stuff? I'm unfamiliar with a resizing option in the Debian installer (but then, I don't install it very often). You can use parted/QParted to (more-or-less safely) resize a partition. I'd boot off a Knoppix CD and try QParted to resize the partition. Worst that can happen at this point is that you'll corrupt the Windows partition and have to reinstall Windows (or rerun the System Restore CD); I would think the Thinkpad came with some method of restoring Windows. Make sure you can restore Windows before messing with the partition table. (And make sure you don't have any unbacked-up data on the drive you don't want to risk). Or, assuming you've taken adequate precautions, try out the installer's partitioning program; it'll be a good education for you to see how well it works. -- Kent West Westing Peacefully http://kentwest.blogspot.com -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Best way to shrink Windows on new laptop?
On Tue, 2007-01-30 at 14:26 +, michael wrote: On Tue, 2007-01-30 at 14:05 +, Anthony Campbell wrote: I'm getting a new Thinkpad Z61M and shall be installing Debian (naturally!). When I last did this on a Thinkpad a couple of years ago I just deleted the Windows partition completely, but I have found, *very* rarely, that I needed it. I'd therefore like to keep Windows, at least for the moment, so I'll need to shrink its partition. Two questions: a. How small could its partition be? Would 10 GB be enough, or too much? That's definitely enough and prob a good place to start. From experience 3Gb isn't enough. (I'm talking for XP Pro - it may depend a bit on which version and what you install.) b. 3.5: If I understand the Debian Installation manual correctly, I can do this by simply selecting a different size for the partition during the installation process. If your machine has a FAT or NTFS filesystem, as used by DOS and Windows, you can wait and use Debian installer's partitioning program to resize the filesystem. Won't this destroy all the Windows stuff? No, the partition editors are clever enough to shrink partitions without deleting files (so you can always install/use XP and then shrink to whatever at a later date - although this may mean a small-ish /whatever partition for Linux). But you are always warned to backup important data first. Just don't use the WinXP setup disk to create/amend partitions - you may end up in a real mess (I did! see previous entries on this mailing list). actually, my experience is with putting gparted on a bootable disk and sorting out (messed up) partitions that way. I can't remember using the Debian installation partition editor to do such things so just want to rephrase my (above) para to mean some partition editors are clever enough... (Ta to Kent's email for prompting me to spot the distinction!) Michael -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Best way to shrink Windows on new laptop?
On Tue, Jan 30, 2007 at 02:05:31PM +, Anthony Campbell wrote: I'm getting a new Thinkpad Z61M and shall be installing Debian (naturally!). When I last did this on a Thinkpad a couple of years ago I just deleted the Windows partition completely, but I have found, *very* rarely, that I needed it. I'd therefore like to keep Windows, at least for the moment, so I'll need to shrink its partition. Two questions: a. How small could its partition be? Would 10 GB be enough, or too much? b. 3.5: If I understand the Debian Installation manual correctly, I can do this by simply selecting a different size for the partition during the installation process. If your machine has a FAT or NTFS filesystem, as used by DOS and Windows, you can wait and use Debian installer's partitioning program to resize the filesystem. Won't this destroy all the Windows stuff? usual caveats apply, but: nope. I've done it twice in recent months and it works just fine. It will cause a windows checkdisk run on the next windows boot (and that's a good thing). A signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Best way to shrink Windows on new laptop?
Anthony Campbell wrote: I'm getting a new Thinkpad Z61M and shall be installing Debian (naturally!). When I last did this on a Thinkpad a couple of years ago I just deleted the Windows partition completely, but I have found, *very* rarely, that I needed it. I'd therefore like to keep Windows, at least for the moment, so I'll need to shrink its partition. Two questions: a. How small could its partition be? Would 10 GB be enough, or too much? 10GB is probably a good number for Windows except Vista which requires something like 13GB(!) just to get it out of the box. b. 3.5: If I understand the Debian Installation manual correctly, I can do this by simply selecting a different size for the partition during the installation process. If your machine has a FAT or NTFS filesystem, as used by DOS and Windows, you can wait and use Debian installer's partitioning program to resize the filesystem. Won't this destroy all the Windows stuff? Potentially. Always keep a backup. You might also find http://www.goodbye-microsoft.com/ to be handy. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
