Re: Best way to shrink Windows on new laptop?
On Tue, 2007-01-30 at 14:05 +0000, 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
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