On Mon, Jun 9, 2008 at 5:38 PM, DJA <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Robert Donovan wrote: >> >> On Fri, Jun 6, 2008 at 7:47 AM, Carl Lowenstein >> <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >>> >>> On Thu, Jun 5, 2008 at 11:48 PM, <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >>>> >>>> I'm gonna take a risk and try to turn my kid's and wife's Windows 2000 >>>> laptop >>>> into a dual boot Ubuntu/W2K laptop. >>>> >>>> Is there open source software to shrink the Win2K partition that is 100% >>>> safe? >>> >>> Nothing is 100% safe. On the other hand, Gparted and Pmagic are two >>> different GUI implementations of the same open-source partitioning >>> tools. (GNU Partition Editor) I have found both of them to be >>> reliable. Yet another version of this software is built into the >>> installer for Ubuntu; >>> >>> By the way, when you say "Win2K partition" do you mean FAT32 or NTFS >>> file system? >>> >>> Before working on the repartitioning, you should of course use the >>> Windows tools to defragment the file system. >> >> I would only add that the Windows defrag doesn't leave the file >> contiguous and sometimes leaves immovable system files in the middle >> of other, non-system data or at the last part of the disk. This >> usually isn't a problem on today's huge hard drives, but I zapped a >> windows 2K install after shrinking a partition because the immovable >> files were orphanned beyond the shrunken partition boundary. I backed >> up everything first, but I needed to do a clean DBAN, repartition, and >> reinstall to get the damn thing to work right again. I think Gparted >> warns you about this, or simply won't let you do it, but it's been a >> while. This also may be an artifiact of older versions of >> PartitionMagic, which is what I was using at the time. > > My own procedure, which has worked well up thru XP (I have no experience > with Vista) is as follows: > > 1) Change Windows' swap file to fixed size (usually 1.5 X installed RAM) > 2) Disable swap file > 3) Reboot into Safe Mode > 4) Defrag HDD (which will now remove swap file space) > 5) Re-enable swap file (now contiguous and fixed) > 6) Reboot > 7) Carry on allowing Windows to abuse and otherwise play havoc with > your and your loved ones' lives. > 8) MS Profits >
I think I did something similar to an XP system, only I remember deleting the swap file after making it fixed size and disabling it, and then defragging. It's been a while for me, but I like your procedure. RD -- [email protected] http://www.kernel-panic.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/kplug-list
