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#1 2010-07-21 00:30:42

ancient_archer
Member
From: Slovakia
Registered: 2010-03-13
Posts: 107

partitioning of new laptop

Hello.

I just bought a brand new Toshiba T130-10G laptop which I find great. It has a 320GB Toshiba HDD. (298 GiB)

However, of course, it comes with Windows 7 Home Premium 64 bit pre-installed. Unfortunately, the partitions look like this (from the beginning of the disk till its end):

1 MB of unallocated space (!) - according to Gparted
400 MB partition - supposedly a recovery partition
149 GB partition - C drive - with Windows 7
149 GB partition - D drive - with some Toshiba Recovery files

Since I don't want to destroy anything and I want to preserve Win7 (sorry smile) and preserve data on D drive as well, BUT at the same time install my beloved Arch, too, I have an IDEA:

to shrink C drive via Win7 default partitioning tool (unfortunately, I can shrink only to 76 GB as the lowest) and then to format the unallocated space by Gparted booted from Live CD.

Then I would shrink D drive of course as well (to 8 GB) and set up other partitions.

So, do you have guys experience with resizing of Windows7 partitions? I read some web sites about it and the guys there suggested that all the Win7 partitions resizing should be done from Win7. But do YOU have experience with that personally?

I really do not want to destroy anything because although I have some kind of Toshiba recovery backup on my desktop, (although dunno if it's Win7 OS installation files or not), my Toshiba does not have CD drive and I dont have a 8 GB USB key.

Thanks

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#2 2010-07-21 00:47:35

Inxsible
Forum Fellow
From: Chicago
Registered: 2008-06-09
Posts: 9,183

Re: partitioning of new laptop

yeah I have partitioned Win 7 drives. Did it through the Win7 utility. Piece of cake.

Shouldn't be too hard. The only issue is that your Linux partitions will probably straddle across the Windows partitions which will NOT work.

This is why :
Max 4 primary partitions can be created. You already have 3 - 400MB, C: and D:

So you can create at max 1 partition (Extended) and then partition that into multiple logical partitions. A single Extended partition cannot straddle another partition.

What you will have to do is :
1) Shrink C drive thru Win 7 utility
2) Shrink D drive thru Win 7 utility
3) Use Gparted to move drive D immediately next to C.
4) This will give you a contiguous unallocated partition at the end -- which you can then create an Extended partition and then go from there.


EDIT : Also are you sure 76GB is the least you can shrink to? I mean that's huge. I have a windows partition that is 30GB and I kept some lee-way. The least that I could shrink to was 18GB.

I would advise you to keep atleast 10GB in C drive as buffer so that if you install anything in Windows, it will have the space to be installed.

Last edited by Inxsible (2010-07-21 00:50:21)


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#3 2010-07-21 05:41:22

ancient_archer
Member
From: Slovakia
Registered: 2010-03-13
Posts: 107

Re: partitioning of new laptop

Thank you for the advice Inxsible!

I will follow your advice. Well, when in Windows, I clicked on shrink the partition, then it was calculated how much it can be skrinked and finally it came out with the result that I can shrink it to 76 GB and not to anything smaller... I myself don't know why it is such a huge number.

I will try to defragment C drive and then I will see.

Thanks again.

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#4 2010-07-21 05:53:54

ngoonee
Forum Fellow
From: Between Thailand and Singapore
Registered: 2009-03-17
Posts: 7,354

Re: partitioning of new laptop

ancient_archer wrote:

I will follow your advice. Well, when in Windows, I clicked on shrink the partition, then it was calculated how much it can be skrinked and finally it came out with the result that I can shrink it to 76 GB and not to anything smaller... I myself don't know why it is such a huge number.

Because it won't shrink beyond the furthest sector which has information, the windows partitioner does not move data around. Defragmenting, as you said you're going to do, will help, assuming that data which is preventing shrinking more isn't system data. You'd have to find special offline defragmenters to handle that if that's the case.


Allan-Volunteer on the (topic being discussed) mailn lists. You never get the people who matters attention on the forums.
jasonwryan-Installing Arch is a measure of your literacy. Maintaining Arch is a measure of your diligence. Contributing to Arch is a measure of your competence.
Griemak-Bleeding edge, not bleeding flat. Edge denotes falls will occur from time to time. Bring your own parachute.

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#5 2010-07-21 09:20:40

ancient_archer
Member
From: Slovakia
Registered: 2010-03-13
Posts: 107

Re: partitioning of new laptop

@ ngoonee: Yes, I thought so and I did defragmentation but it only made things even worse... Now I cannot shrink to less than 78 GB!

Could you pls recommend me some good, safe offline defragmenter?
Thanks a lot

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#6 2010-07-21 10:24:29

ngoonee
Forum Fellow
From: Between Thailand and Singapore
Registered: 2009-03-17
Posts: 7,354

Re: partitioning of new laptop

Sorry, I only did this once way back years ago when I first bought this windows laptop and stuck linux on it.

I remember just picking stuff up from googling "cannot shrink partition windows vista" or something like that. Google is your friend.


Allan-Volunteer on the (topic being discussed) mailn lists. You never get the people who matters attention on the forums.
jasonwryan-Installing Arch is a measure of your literacy. Maintaining Arch is a measure of your diligence. Contributing to Arch is a measure of your competence.
Griemak-Bleeding edge, not bleeding flat. Edge denotes falls will occur from time to time. Bring your own parachute.

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#7 2010-07-21 16:23:27

adriandelatabla
Member
Registered: 2010-04-12
Posts: 6

Re: partitioning of new laptop

I recently (mid June) did a resize of a Win7 partition using gparted in a SystemRescueCd (http://www.sysresccd.org/Main_Page), it was easy and everything worked fine.

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