dual booting - accessible partition resizers and some other questions

Daniel Dalton d.dalton at iinet.net.au
Sat Mar 22 00:30:54 UTC 2008


On Thu, 20 Mar 2008, Willem van der Walt wrote:

>> So that is done before or after the resizing?
> Before the resizing.

OK.

>> If its in linux, what tool can do this?
> I do not really know of a tool that can do this, but what might be an

Ok I'll have a look around.

> option is to create a file that fills up the win partition and then
> afterwards delete it again.
> Do a df -h on the mounted partition to see more or less how much free
> space is available and then use a command like:
> dd if=/dev/zero of=bigfile count=1000M to create a 1 gb file.
> Then simply rm bigfile.
> I am not sure how much it would actually help with defragmentation, but I
> often use it when I want to compress a image of a partition.

Ok. How does that help though with all the other stuff being on the disk?

> By the way, if you have another linux box connected over a local ethernet
> or so with enough space, you can first image the windows partition into a
> file on the other box for a backup.

I have a 320 gb external hard drive so can I backup to this?
(I only have 13 gb to backup so I have plenty of room.)

>>>> Once resizing is done then how do I tell linux to install to its own new
>>>> partition and make a swap and leave windows alone?
>>> Run the linux installer.  I have never worked with a Linux installer that
>>> distroys things without asking you.
>>> What most does, is to tell you about the empty space on the disk and then
>>> suggest that it will install itself there.
>>
>> Good!
>> So do I select manually do the partitions?
>> Or automatically handle them?
>> (in the installer)
> I think you should be safe to select automaticly handle them, just read
> any questions the system might ask you to make sure that things will
> happen as you want. If you are asked no questions, the installer had
> enough info to do the correct thing by itself.
> The correct thing is not to remove the windows partition without asking.
> >

Ok I'll do that.

>>> Its up to you, but Ubuntu is easier for accessibility.
>> Is its repo as big as debian's?
> I have never had any problems.  Ubuntu is a debian-based distribution, so
> I would think so.
> I have found some packages in the Ubuntu repo which I could not find for
> Debian.

I'll probably go with ubuntu then.

>
>>
>>> You might afterwards want to change your /boot/grub/grub.lst file to
>>> change the timeout setting, but after the install you would normally get a
>>> grub menu from where you can press enter for linux and down-arrow then
>>> enter for Windows.
>>
>> Good. Do you mean menu.lst?
>> Or is that for something else?
> These things differ, but yes, I ment menu.lst.
> I quickly checked on an Ubuntu box and there is also a file called
> grub.conf where the timeout setting can be changed.  menu.lst is the
> generic grub filename.
> >

Yep, I know how to do this I think...

Also re resizing:
The guys in one of the linux-coders channels told me to resize after 
defragging and resize in the ubuntu installer.
Is this ok?
Or should I use ntfsresize still?
What happens if the resize is a failure do I lose data?
will windows boot?
If it is successful and say resized to 20 gb will windows boot next time?

Also does ubuntu have an accessible installer?
If so how do I activate it?

Thanks for all your help I really appreciate it,

-- 
Daniel Dalton

http://members.iinet.net.au/~ddalton/
d.dalton at iinet.net.au




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