Re: Installing Debian alongside Windows Vista?
On Sun, Jun 28, 2009 at 07:08:20AM -0500, Neal Hogan wrote:
> On Sun, Jun 28, 2009 at 3:13 AM, Thierry Chatelet<tchatelet@free.fr> wrote:
> > On Sunday 28 June 2009 09:50:52 John L Fjellstad wrote:
> >> Zachary Uram <netrek@gmail.com> writes:
> >> > Hi,
> >> >
> >> > I have a 500GB disk which has Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium
> >> > (64bit) installed on it. Not sure if that is 1 huge partition or not.
> >> > I assume it is NTFS. Can someone please tell me exactly what I must do
> >> > to shrink the Vista install by 50% and install Debian squeeze (64bit
> >> > AMD) on the 250GB partition that will be freed.
> >>
> >> I used to use PartitionMagic to shrink Windows partitions. Not sure if
> >> it still works with Vista, but I would think the newest version has
> >> support for it. A free vesion is gparted, but I have never used this.
> >>
> >> --
> >> John L. Fjellstad
> >> web: http://www.fjellstad.org/ Quis custodiet ipsos custodes
> >
> > Live gparted cd works fine.
> >
> +1 (http://gparted.sourceforge.net/)
>
> Also, if I remember correctly, my MS partition had to be defrag'd. I
> used a third party program (don't recall which one) because it was my
> understanding that the one that comes with MS will not do in such a
> way that is conducive to sharing.
>
I've used a program called DirMS on Windows XP to defrag and move all
contents to the front of the partition. You can verify the location of the
files afterwards using the built-in Windows defrag tool (just choose
"analyze").
One potential problem is that there are certain system files that Windows
will not allow to be moved. So if they are spread all over your drive,
resizing could be difficult. I believe they are denoted in green color
when using the built-in Windows defrag tool.
After you've defragged and moved files to the front of the partition, you
can estimate how much you can reduce your Windows partition without
"cutting off" your Windows files.
Overall, I think the easiest thing to do is grab an old hard drive and
throw it in your box and put Debian on that (or maybe put Windows on that,
but that's more work). Virtualization is also a good idea, already
suggested by someone else. I've used VirtualBox with good results.
-Rob
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