Expanding Windows partition and diminishing ext3

I'm in a situation where I have XP and Fedora on the same hard drive. Both take up just about half the drive. I would like to use Partition Magic or Gparted to expand the NTFS/Windows partition at the expense of the Fedora/ext3 partition.

Most of the "How To's" I've managed to locate don't go into the advisability of doing this, what precautions might need to be taken or what the risks and dangers possibly are.

Just thought I'd ask for a little guidance if you've attempted this before. Thanks for your help. :)

Hi, Dan!

I've actually done this a couple of times using Gparted. The only problems I ran into was having Windows go through a scan disk on the next re-boot. I think that so long as you back up your data, you'll be just fine. Now, as far as the dangers involved... I would say pretty much the same as when you re-size any other partition. But like I said, it went smoothly enough for me.

Hello,

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Dapper Dan

Most of the "How To's" I've managed to locate don't go into the advisability of doing this, what precautions might need to be taken or what the risks and dangers possibly are.

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The same than when doing any operation of this kind: backup if you value your data. For the rest, it's pretty straightforward: just pick the program of your choice and use it to change the size of the partitions. There are a number of parted based solutions, and there might be Windows programs to do this as well. Some people around use the Parted Rescue CD or something like that. I never used it though.

It usually just works, but if there's a problem or a power outage while doing this, then you will love having backups. A simple problem when doing this can be a real catastrophe :)

I don't have anything new to add to this. I just wanted to say I have the same set up as you, and Gparted works like a charm, except I was decreasing the windows partition. Windows scared me when I first rebooted, as it ran through scandisc or whatever it's called now, but I didn't have any trouble.

So yeah, Gparted is the way to go.

Backup the user data ... and throw partition magic in the bin ! Gparted is the way to go ... not let me down yet. Partition magic - half way through operations ... bombs out and trashes the partition table - still got the box & CD but its going on the next fire I have !

You can expect the usual Windows ... something happened while I was asleep - so I want to check everything is OK message :rolleyes: