Installing Windows after Linux - Partitioning Help Please

DanR33 · n00b Joined: 24 Feb 2005 Posts: 7

Hi, I'm trying to install Windows following the guide on the Wiki - http://gentoo-wiki.com/HOWTO_Install_Windows_after_Gentoo

I've got to 'Shrinking the partition' and now I'm stuck, how do I go about it and what does it mean? Is there an easier/more trouble free way of resizing a partition?

Any help appreciated, thanks.

kurtwisener · Posted: Sun Jun 12, 2005 1:08 am Post subject:

Personally I would backup Gentoo and zero-fill the drive. Then install Windows and build Gentoo around it. It may take a little longer but in my experience it is eminently safer and more stable. Otherwise, you pretty much have to follow the HOWTO verbatim. Sorry, wish I were a little more helpful.

-Kurt
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CooDy · n00b Joined: 26 Aug 2004 Posts: 36 Location: Slovenia

I would agree with kurtwisener. You should back up a partition then resize it, its much easier, and you probably have more than one partition, so you can easily copy things from one partition to another, it takes a bit of time, but then you will be able to repartition your system easily. Personally I would do it like this since its much safer and should not take up more than half an hour more than resizing, except if you have massive amounts of data on your disks.
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DanR33 · n00b Joined: 24 Feb 2005 Posts: 7

That's the problem, I've got 3 HDD's - 2 of them are 160gb and both full, the other is 120gb and has 30gb free so I've got no room to shift data around and backup... I just wanted to take 5 or so gb from it to install Windows on so I could play some games that don't work in Cedega

Oh well, when this HDD is full I'll get a PCI IDE controller and another HDD then install Windows on it before I do anything else

gmalleus · Posted: Mon Jun 13, 2005 4:10 pm Post subject:

Hey,
I need help in this area too.

I was following the same guide, got my file system resized but trying to figure out how to shrink the actual partition size so I can create a new partition at the end of the drive.
had the following setup:
/dev/hda1 - boot - 64mb
/dev/hda2 - swap - 1 gig
/dev/hda3 - root - 58.9 gigs

resized the root partition down to 43 gigs. parted says the filesystem is 43 gigs but the partition is still 58 gigs. how do i resize the partition as to create space for a new one?
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gmalleus · Posted: Mon Jun 13, 2005 5:09 pm Post subject:

figured it out,
hopfully this will help you DanR33.

I was stuck at the same point, i knew that i had shrunk my filesystem but the partition was still at full size. I ended up just using cfdisk to delete the partition, created one that started at the exact spot where the one i just deleted was and that was large enough to encompass the filesystem. This frred up space at the end of my drive for me to install windows.
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