Dude, the Dell is here!!! On Tue, Dec 23, 2008 at 9:08 AM, Robert Bridge <rob...@robbieab.com> wrote: > On Mon, 22 Dec 2008 22:39:17 -0800 > "Kevin O'Gorman" <kogor...@gmail.com> wrote: > >> Dude, I'm getting a Dell! >> >> It's gonna come with Vista, and I have to use it that way for work. >> But I want to >> put a Linux partition on there. So I need to repartition. >> >> Having learned to be cautious, I'm wondering if there is a good >> open-source way to back up about 300GB of NTFS such that I can >> restore fairly smoothly. It has to be fairly fast, so file-by-file >> copies are probably going to suck. I'll have 100MB >> ethernet to a big-enough drive. >> >> Then, I'm wondering about partitioning tools. I can use >> PartitionMagic 7.0. I've heard >> of gparted, but not used it. Any advice? > > Um, I thought Vista could resize it's own partitions...
Maybe. I'll look into that next, because I'm hoping that will keep me from messing up the existing stuff too much. It's not obvious to me how I should repartition. The current setup looks like this to fdisk, and I'm a bit nervous about the meaning and use of partition sda5. If I add anything, I either have to destroy it, renumber it or move it. Command (m for help): p Disk /dev/sda: 250.0 GB, 250059350016 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 30401 cylinders Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes Disk identifier: 0x92cd386f Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/sda1 1 5 40131 de Dell Utility /dev/sda2 6 1280 10240000 7 HPFS/NTFS Partition 2 does not end on cylinder boundary. /dev/sda3 * 1280 30075 231295156 7 HPFS/NTFS /dev/sda4 30075 30402 2620416 f W95 Ext'd (LBA) /dev/sda5 30076 30402 2619392 dd Unknown Command (m for help): q > Also, if it's a new machine, use the re-install disk for your back up ;) Not on your life. There are about 6 of these, with the software that's loaded. A bunch of them take a reeeeaaaalll long time to load. OTOH, the ntfsclone that the kind guy above clued me in about took about 40 minutes. Another 15 or so for the smaller partitions and MBR, and I could rebuild from a completely erased hard drive. Plus I really like backups (long sad experience). > > RobbieAB > -- Kevin O'Gorman, PhD
