changing partition table

[aznkwyjibo007]

my laptop is currently running a dual boot.

my hd is approx 80gig
60 gigs wimpdoze xp
15 gigs linux
5 gig ibm access recovery (i haven't found a way to liberate that space)
and a small swap parition

im looking to make my linux partition larger and shrink my xp parittion. i am wondering if there are any potential hazards of doing this and if there is anything special that should be done (i.e. bootloader) prior to making such a change.


TIA

[smolloy]

This may be quite difficult to do depending on how you intend to do it. I assume that the xp partition is the first partition on the disk?? In this case you will have to shrink the size of this partition first -- this is the easy part, since I think pretty much all partitioners are able to do this. The hard part is moving the lower edge of the linux partition (ext3? reiserfs?) downwards. In the case of an ext2 or ext3 partition, then only partitioner I've seen that can move the lower edge of one of these is Partition Magic, which you will have to buy.

If you don't like this idea, then you will have to liberate enough space between it and XP for you to copy the whole partition into. Then erase the original, and move the upper edge up to take up the newly created space. Doing an operation like this inevitably increases the chances of data loss

If it's reiserfs then I think free partitioners (such as qtparted) will be able to handle it.

But it is always important to backup your data before playing with things. And to defragment the ntfs drive before you touch it as well.