Re: Best way to shrink Windows on new laptop?
On Tue, 2007-01-30 at 14:26 +0000, michael wrote:
> 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).
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
>
>
Reply to: