A friend wants to install UBUNTU 8.04 on his computer that already has
Windows XP.

Defrag did open some space at the end of the current Windows partition
but my estimation is that it may not be large enough for a decent sized
UBUNTU partition.

Windows Defrag indicates that there are several spaces between data
blocks in the C: partitiom so if there was a more effective defrag,
there'd be plenty of space at the end of the C: partition for a UBUNTU
installation.

Can GPARTED do a safe job of shrinking the C: partition and create a
decent sized UBUNTU partition without loss of Windows:data?

Any hope ?

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On Sun, 2008-08-17 at 21:04 -0400, elmo wrote:

> Can GPARTED do a safe job of shrinking the C: partition and create a
> decent sized UBUNTU partition without loss of Windows:data?

gparted can shrink NTFS partitions. I have done it several times
without any data loss. It is still a good idea to back up the user
data, just in case.

You can check out the feature set here:

http://gparted.sourceforge.net/features.php
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Smoot Carl-Mitchell wrote:
> On Sun, 2008-08-17 at 21:04 -0400, elmo wrote:
> > Can GPARTED do a safe job of shrinking the C: partition and create a
> > decent sized UBUNTU partition without loss of Windows:data?
>
> gparted can shrink NTFS partitions. I have done it several times
> without any data loss. It is still a good idea to back up the user
> data, just in case.

I have used gparted to shrink NTFS partitions WITH data loss twice, so a
backup of the user data is not only a good idea but mandatory IMHO. I
suppose that the data loss was caused by the fragmented distribution of
data blocks on the disk (even after using defrag). But I can't verify
that assumption because a) those were not my disks and b) they are now
used for Linux only


Nils

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Nils Kassube wrote:
> Smoot Carl-Mitchell wrote:
>
>> On Sun, 2008-08-17 at 21:04 -0400, elmo wrote:
>>
>>> Can GPARTED do a safe job of shrinking the C: partition and create a
>>> decent sized UBUNTU partition without loss of Windows:data?
>>>
>> gparted can shrink NTFS partitions. I have done it several times
>> without any data loss. It is still a good idea to back up the user
>> data, just in case.
>>
>
> I have used gparted to shrink NTFS partitions WITH data loss twice, so a
> backup of the user data is not only a good idea but mandatory IMHO. I
> suppose that the data loss was caused by the fragmented distribution of
> data blocks on the disk (even after using defrag). But I can't verify
> that assumption because a) those were not my disks and b) they are now
> used for Linux only
>
>
> Nils
>
>
I do not hear the requirement to defrag the hard drive voiced often.
I think it is critical to do that first. My Wife's XP gets defrag'ed
every time she complains her computer is too slow :-)

Karl


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I did it with the GParted Live CD (it was a while ago so it was GParted 0.3.4) and it worked perfectly without defragmentation. It seems like GParted moves the data so it will fit into the new partition. Hopefully it won't move things that shouldn't be moved, though, I don't know but mine Windows (XP) partition is now about 15 GB and I had no problems with WIndows XP the few times I used it since then. It was just as crappy as it always has been.




J.R.




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Karl Larsen wrote:

>> Nils
>>
>>
> I do not hear the requirement to defrag the hard drive voiced often.
> I think it is critical to do that first. My Wife's XP gets defrag'ed
> every time she complains her computer is too slow :-)
>
> Karl
>
>

In this case defragmentation is only useful if you are going to resize
the partition /and/ you aren't using something like Norton Utilities (or
similar) that 'optimize' your hard drive based on most frequently used
apps being situated at the best spot on the drive for fastest loading.

You want to defragment the partition in such as way as to make all the
data be toward the front of the partition (logically speaking) if you
plan on shrinking the partition from the back. The standard windows
defragmenter is perfect for this.

Just thought I'd warn you. I have seen a couple of bombed partitions
because of Norton Utilities 'optimizations'.

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Mark Haney wrote:
> Karl Larsen wrote:
>
>
>>> Nils
>>>
>>>
>>>
>> I do not hear the requirement to defrag the hard drive voiced often.
>> I think it is critical to do that first. My Wife's XP gets defrag'ed
>> every time she complains her computer is too slow :-)
>>
>> Karl
>>
>>
>>
>
> In this case defragmentation is only useful if you are going to resize
> the partition /and/ you aren't using something like Norton Utilities (or
> similar) that 'optimize' your hard drive based on most frequently used
> apps being situated at the best spot on the drive for fastest loading.
>
> You want to defragment the partition in such as way as to make all the
> data be toward the front of the partition (logically speaking) if you
> plan on shrinking the partition from the back. The standard windows
> defragmenter is perfect for this.
>
> Just thought I'd warn you. I have seen a couple of bombed partitions
> because of Norton Utilities 'optimizations'.
>
>
I was not aware of Norton's effort. I use the the one shipped with
XP and it takes hours but it works great.

Karl


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Karl Larsen wrote:
> Mark Haney wrote:

>>
> I was not aware of Norton's effort. I use the the one shipped with
> XP and it takes hours but it works great.
>

Well, for those of us who remember the old school (and IMHO the REAL)
Norton Utilities, that suite of apps was indispensible back in the DOS
world. Since Symantec's acquisition, I've just not bothered with it.
It's too resource heavy and doesn't provide the benefits it used to.




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Mark Haney wrote:
> You want to defragment the partition in such as way as to make all the
> data be toward the front of the partition (logically speaking) if you
> plan on shrinking the partition from the back. The standard windows
> defragmenter is perfect for this.

Actually that is what I wanted to do, but the Windows XP defragmenter
doesn't have the option to move everything towards the front of the
partition. That may be different for other versions of Windows, but with
Windows XP it isn't possible.


Nils

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On Monday 18 August 2008 18:19, Nils Kassube wrote:
> Mark Haney wrote:
> > You want to defragment the partition in such as way as to make all the
> > data be toward the front of the partition (logically speaking) if you
> > plan on shrinking the partition from the back. The standard windows
> > defragmenter is perfect for this.
>
> Actually that is what I wanted to do, but the Windows XP defragmenter
> doesn't have the option to move everything towards the front of the
> partition. That may be different for other versions of Windows, but with
> Windows XP it isn't possible.
>
>
> Nils

I found that on the original harddrive that came with XP on it. I defragged
it, but viewing the post defrag, there was a whole bunch of stuff at the
start of the drive, then a lot of blank space, then more stuff, apparently
unmoveable files. My XP is some 8+GB, so I used the Gparted live CD, and
resized giving XP 12GB, which worked ok, and left me some 28GB of freespace,
where I've been able to install a couple of distros that I wanted to try out.
Kubuntu Dapper was the 1st, so installed Grub in the MBR. Dapper booted ok,
so did XP. In fact XP was booting better going through the chainloader in
Grub, than it done before (often ending up in a reboot cycle). Installed FC5
next (you can see how long ago I did this), put Grub in the / partition of
FC5, rebooted into Dapper, and added a chainloader in /boot/grub/grub.conf,
pointing to the / partition of FC5, all 3 OS's boot ok. Job done.

I must say I did not back up XP, as even though it has a bunch of music apps
on it, I wasn't too bothered if the resize had gone pearshaped, and I'd lost
XP to the bit bucket in the sky.

Nigel.

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