dual boot partition setup

[vaineh]

ive started getting into linux so got a friend to help me install suse 9.2 on my machine a while back and i have it setup for dual boot with xp so i can still do all my usual stuff on xp, gaming etc

anyway we pretty much split my 160gig hard drive down the middle one for windows and one for linux. however i would now like to change the sizes and give windows side more space as ive got alot of hard drive space being wasted as its not getting used for linux stuffs

how can i change it all without losing anything?

[Roxoff]

You need a partition tool such as partition magic (windows) or qtparted (linux).

[vaineh]

You need a partition tool such as partition magic (windows) or qtparted (linux).

will using using partitionmagic in windows see the linux partitions and be able to change them without losing anything?

[Gnux]

will using using partitionmagic in windows see the linux partitions and be able to change them without losing anything?

Normally yes but it's more secure to backup ur data so that u got no bad surprise after the resizement.

[dcmah]

@vaineh
afaik partition magic only truly recognizes the ext2/3 file system, not reiser (my reiser partitions are identified as ext2 with pm8.0 in my case)!
so if you set up linux on a reiser partition (as prob most people have) you are better off using paragon hd manager pro, which generally has no problems with the reiser format. resizing and merging partitions with different filesystems is also possible.
but as always with those kind of actions on your mind, backing up your data is a good idea...

[vaineh]

you mean im going to have to buy some software?!

[d38dm8nw81k1ng]

you mean im going to have to buy some software?!

i would think qtparted could do it, but unfortunately i don't think it can do it non-destructively. i'm not an expert so if someone can confirm or discredit this, i'd like to know. if i'm right, then you will have to pay for software, but make sure you double check that it works (like, someone with experience from using the software) before you splash the cash

[dcmah]

you mean im going to have to buy some software?!

erhm, now it would be interesting to know how you got your copy of partition magic in the first place...
let me put it like that then, if you somehow manage to get your fingers on a copy of the paragon disk manager, use it. it lets you resize/merge partitions without data loss (that is, most probably) and it has no problems with the detection of different file systems (unlike partition magic and actually any other win program that is). i know that there are boot cd's around (like the miniPE one) that provide you with that piece of software...

ps i too would be quite interested about the current status of qtparted...

[ajehals]

I have used qtparted to carry out resize operations of ext2 ext3 ntfs and fat32 partitions many times over the last year or so. I have only ever experienced one problem, that was resizing a ext3 partition on an ancient 4Gb maxtor drive whilst adding a 80Mb fat32 partition to the start of the drive, in that instance the drive died, but im certain the drive was on the way out anyway. (i.e. I had issues with corrupt data, bad blocks for about a month before it died and had had to run fsck against it many times to corect moderate errors...)

In my oppinion its fairly safe resizing your partitions using qtparted I use qparted v0.4.5-cvs on debian fairly often to resize drives on machines I am repairing and I see no reason why it wouldnt be safe on other distro's.

As a note; I used to use qparted on a mepis live cd to resize ntfs partitions on windows machines in a corporate environment (to add a 900Mb recovery partition) because it was quicker and cheaper than buying 3rd party software.

End of the day though remember to back up anything that is important to you and be aware that with qtparted, as with partition magic or any other program that carries out these kinds of operations there is a risk (however small) that something may go wrong. If you create empty space or new partitions for an existing OS, use the tools that come with that OS to do any formating, it will reduce the number of operations that are carried out and should prevent any issues occuring during the format process.

cheers, hope that helps

Andy H
www.ictsc.com