Resizing with gparted for Fedora installation

[Craig White]

On Thu, 2009-04-02 at 16:17 +0300, Mark Ryden wrote:
> Hello,
>   I have a new Lenovo laptop with Windows Vista on it. I want to install Linux
> on it while keeping vista on it (though I rarely intend to use Vista,
> keeping vista is a MUST for me). So I want it to be dual boot. There is
> one partition on the disk, with 160GB. I consider using gparted livecd for it.
> In fact, I did not used the
> There is a way to Windows Vista except booting once into the system, so most of
> the disk is free.
> I know how to use the resize feature of gparted. I intend to resize
> the partition
> to 20 GB and then create a new parition in the free space which will be
> created. On the new paritition I intend to install the Linux.
> My questions are:
> 1) Is it safe to do resizing with gparted ?
> 2) I saw in the web in some post :
> run:
> #ntfsfix -V
> and then:
> if you don't see version 2 don't use this version of gparted on Vista
> NTFS volumes
> 
> 3) This can be done also by ntfsresize, thus:
> ntfsresize -s 20G /dev/sda1
> 
> Is ntfsresize -s 20G any better ? safer? or is it in fact the same
> (but not from
> the GUI)?
----
gparted should work but things to consider...

Fedora 10 installer can resize NTFS partition on the fly when
installing. Gparted might be a bit easier (assuming that you make a boot
CD).

If you have used the Windows for any length of time, defrag first.

Leave any utility partitions alone, i.e. re-installation partitions etc.
so if necessary, you could reinstall Windows.

After resizing, Windows will run a full repair on the next boot up, be
prepared to allow the time.

Windows XP seems to require at least 12 Gigabytes with current SP3 and
Vista likely needs more. 20 should be OK. If space is not an issue, 24
or 32 Gigabytes might be safer, especially if your need to use Windows
increases.

Craig


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