Arch Linux

Haptic

Member

Registered: 2009-09-03

Posts: 149

[SOLVED]Proper Partitioning for Dual-boot

I am attempting to dual-boot Windows XP and Arch, except I've left no free space...

Do I have to reformat?
Also, a question on windows. It uses 1 partition for everything, then allows you to create logical ones, right?

Last edited by Haptic (2011-06-22 04:31:38)

Mardoct

Member

Registered: 2009-08-17

Posts: 208

Re: [SOLVED]Proper Partitioning for Dual-boot

If you don't have any unpartitioned space, you can risk data loss by resizing the NTFS partition with GParted or something similar - there's a liveCD for that program, just google it - or you can get a second hard drive.

Windows can use logical partitions, but they each appear as another drive. EXT* / Swap partitions don't show up, as they aren't recognized by Windows.

Once you have Windows monopolizing your hard drive, you can't just squeeze in a logical partition; you must resize the partition - not always safe - or get more hard drive space.

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graysky

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From: :wq

Registered: 2008-12-01

Posts: 10,597

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Re: [SOLVED]Proper Partitioning for Dual-boot

I am attempting to dual-boot Windows XP and Arch, except I've left no free space...

Do I have to reformat?
Also, a question on windows. It uses 1 partition for everything, then allows you to create logical ones, right?

What Mardoct said about resizing w/ gparted is true, so unless you have the data backed-up, do it as your own risk.  Can you post a screenshot of a gparted map of your drive? 

As you know, Win needs to be the first partition on the drive.  You are limited to four primary partitions, so if you want more, make three primary partitions, then the rest of the space an an extended partition.  Inside the extended partition, you can add many logical partitions.  I'd recommend doing all this from within gparted.

My 1 TB drive example:

/dev/sda1 (primary for windows), 20 gigs
/dev/sda2 (primary for Arch), 20 gigs
/dev/sda3 (backup of my Arch partition), 20 gigs
/dev/sda4 (EXTENDED PARTITION), 873 gigs
/dev/sda5 (logical for /home), 72 gigs
/dev/sda6 (logical for /var), 8 gigs
/dev/sda7 (logical for /boot), 0.11 gigs
/dev/sda8 (logical for /data), 784 gigs
/dev/sda9 (logical for swap), 8 gigs

As a side note, you can also you gparted to copy/paste entire partitions which makes keeping backup very easy.  My /dev/sda3 is a periodic backup of my live Arch partition.

Last edited by graysky (2009-09-16 11:15:29)

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