Hi all-

I'm relatively new to linux, though I've been using it casually for several months now...

I'm running FC4 (2.6.7-1.2139) and Win XP as dual boot on Averatec 3250 laptop (1.67 GHz AMD Mobile Athlon XP-M, 1GB RAM, 60GB HDD)...

A friend helped me install initially, and I kept WinXP as the largest partition on the disk (in case I didn't like / couldn't get used to linux...ha! big mistake in retrospect) ... however, I am rapidly reaching the point where I'd like to add more space to the linux partition and drastically downsize the winXP partition (yay!)

Is there a (relatively) easy way to safely resize the partitions? I don't have an extra hard disk to backup my data before I proceed...

thanks for any advice!

Cheers!

Use the gparted live CD. Though normally you don't want to resize partitions without a backup. You also need to defragment the Windows partition before resizing.

Um, first thing you want to do is defrag the windows partition. Then you could boot off of a live cd like knoppix or ubuntu or kubuntu and use qtparted. You need to go that route bc you wont be able to manipulate the partitions if you're booted off that drive. Remember though its risky doing it even that way. I'd back up everything you could think of it would really be a pain to reinstall anyway on cd's or dvd's if possible.

Whoops that was redundant Apparently it took me too long to type in basically the same reply

cool, thanks for the info...

one question though, I've noticed in the past that when you defrag a windows partition, there are some "unmovable files"...how will this affect the repartitioning?

sorry for the windows question in a linux forum!

I don't know about XP, but I have learned with Win2K that it makes sense to reinstall every year. If you do re-install, consider making a separate data partition shared between Linux and Windows. This can be FAT32, unless you want multiple users with access controls.