[Leaplist] Partitioning Gurus?

[Chris]

David Simmons wrote:

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>>On Friday 09 February 2007 10:05:45 pm Chris wrote:
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>Urrgh - I talked a friend into installing Linux, for which he
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>>>volunteered his new Dell laptop, as long as he could
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>dual-boot.
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>>>So I fired up GPartEd, all ready to slice and
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>dice, and saw this:
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>>>/dev/sda1   fat16   47.03
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>MiB
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>>>/dev/sda2   ntfs    104.99 GiB
>>>unallocated
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>           7.84 MiB
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>>>/dev/sda3   extended   2.00 GiB
>>>   /dev/sda5  fat32   2.00 GiB
>>>/dev/sda4   fat 32
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>  4.74 GiB
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>>>Apparently, Dell hase all kinds of
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>really wonderful stuff that
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>>>just has to chew up the
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>available partitions. Thank you, Dell.
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>>>I don't know what
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>these are there for - I suspect the fat16
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>>>is for some Dell
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>Diag utility - and one of the fat32s is
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>>>probably for Ghost?
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>- No clue.
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>>>Any suggestions that won't kill his
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>existing functionality?
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>>>While I'm in there, I'd like to
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>sneak in a fat32 partition for
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>>>files he'll use in both
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>systems.
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>>>Cheers,
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>Chris
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>>If you were planning on shrinking the ntfs
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>partition, you should be able
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>>to
>>steal enough from it
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>to give him a 10, 20, maybe even 50 GB partition(s)
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>>for
>>Linux.  And a couple of GB for the fat32 share area could come from
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>the
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>>same
>>area.  That should give a nice safe proof of
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>concept.  If he likes it,
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>>then
>>he (or you) can further
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>determine what you want to eliminate or shrink.
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>>I
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>would think that would be safer than removing something that might be
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>>part
>>of the Dell mystery partitions.
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>You probably already know this, but if you do decide to shrink the ntfs
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>>partition, make sure you use a utility that can properly move the
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>fixed
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>>ntfs
>>sectors, such as partition magic 8(or
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>higher).
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>>My opinion only...
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>I think trying
>to do a 'non-destructive' re-partitioning to the NTFS partition is NOT
>going to work....since he already has the max 4 primary partitions - the
>NTFS partition would need to be marked 'Extended' - then split up into one
>for windows...and one for Linux....but THIS WILL  BE DESTRUCTIVE to
>existing data.  
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Yep. I was wondering about shrinking the NTFS partition, which
I understand is reasonably safe these days, then expanding the
extended partition (sda3) into that area to get room for some
extra logical partitions. Doable?

>With all of the good Live CD's out there
>- why not have him 'play' with Linux that way?...and do a 'shared save' to
>a USB disk or something?
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The Live CD is how I "talked" him into installing Linux. You know,
like they say, "One CD is worth a thousand words." But, while he
likes Linux, he's not in love with the load speed running from
CD.

Cheers,

Chris