>
>
>Date: Thu, 08 Sep 2005 20:43:53 +0100
>From: malcolm <malcolm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
>
>how do I resize a ntfs partition so that I can put Fedora 4 on a PC that
>has a 40G HD that already has XP on it ( I don't want to reinstall XP )
>
>ta
>
>mal
>
There is a way to do this using Knoppix, ntfsresize and fdisk. However,
there is a large chance for things to go wrong if you really don't know
exactly what your doing so I would just advise you to get a second
harddrive and installing FC4 on that. It will save you a great deal of
grief and avoid a lot of potential problems that could irreversably kill
your system; forcing you to reinstall XP.
If you insist on doing it though, here are the "no guarantees, don't
come back complaining that all your data got munched "steps:
1) defrag XP
2a) boot to Knoppix and make a backup on some removable/network media of
your MBR and partition info using 'sfdisk -d [boot_device]' and 'dd
if=[boot_device] of=somefile.image bs=512 count=1'
- this will save your butt if things go horribly wrong
- [boot_device] will be either /dev/sda or /dev/hda most likely but
it depends on your system. If you do not know, you shouldn't be doing
any of this. Just get a second hd.
**** this is the end of the safe steps ****
2b) Run ntfsresize making sure to follow all the instructions and
recommendations.
- Shrink the ntfs filesystem down to just over the minimum size. Say
min. size + 1GB
3) boot to XP and let it run chkdsk automatically on bootup
4) boot to Knoppix and run fdisk
- remove the partition and remake it to be the size you want laving
ample free space at the end of the disk
5) boot to XP to make sure its happy
6) boot to Knoppix and run ntfsresize again to resize it to fill the
partition
- make another backup of your partition and MBR like step 2a) just
to be safe
7) boot to XP as in step 3)
8) boot to FC install CD and install FC4
The complexity of steps 2b) to 7) is just to ensure that you don't have
a fs bigger than your partition or leave some unformatted space within
your partition. In either case, I don't think that it will matter
immediately but it likely will once Windows starts trying to use that
space. In any case, I have found that the reboot between the ntfsresize
and the fdisk is necessary. Windows becomes horribly upset and blue
screens on boot in some cases if you don't reboot in between.
So there you go ... go out and get a second drive :]
But no matter what you do, backup any valuable, irreplaceable data as
messing with this stuff can lead to data loss easily.
/Mike
