[Leaplist] Partitioning Gurus?

[Dan Cherry]

On Friday 09 February 2007 10:05:45 pm Chris wrote:
> Urrgh - I talked a friend into installing Linux, for which he
> volunteered his new Dell laptop, as long as he could dual-boot.
> So I fired up GPartEd, all ready to slice and dice, and saw this:
>
> /dev/sda1   fat16   47.03 MiB
> /dev/sda2   ntfs    104.99 GiB
> unallocated            7.84 MiB
> /dev/sda3   extended   2.00 GiB
>    /dev/sda5  fat32   2.00 GiB
> /dev/sda4   fat 32   4.74 GiB
>
> Apparently, Dell hase all kinds of really wonderful stuff that
> just has to chew up the available partitions. Thank you, Dell.
> I don't know what these are there for - I suspect the fat16
> is for some Dell Diag utility - and one of the fat32s is
> probably for Ghost? - No clue.
>
> Any suggestions that won't kill his existing functionality?
> While I'm in there, I'd like to sneak in a fat32 partition for
> files he'll use in both systems.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Chris

If you were planning on shrinking the ntfs partition, you should be able to 
steal enough from it to give him a 10, 20, maybe even 50 GB partition(s) for 
Linux.  And a couple of GB for the fat32 share area could come from the same 
area.  That should give a nice safe proof of concept.  If he likes it, then 
he (or you) can further determine what you want to eliminate or shrink.

I would think that would be safer than removing something that might be part 
of the Dell mystery partitions.  

You probably already know this, but if you do decide to shrink the ntfs 
partition, make sure you use a utility that can properly move the fixed ntfs 
sectors, such as partition magic 8(or higher).

My opinion only...
-- 
Dan Cherry
dscherry (@) bellsouth.net

Finding a solution to a problem doesn't solve the problem...
Implementing the solution solves the problem.