Partitioning Windows XP HD with Mandrake 10.0
 

So, I'm installing Mandrake 10.0 on my 20GB HD, all of which is devoted to a Windows XP partition (it actually has about 8 GB of free space). I'm relatively new to partitioning and, loathe to lose all my Windows data, am just working with the DrakX partitioning wizard that comes with the Mandrake installer.

But the problem is that whenever I choose "use free space on Windows partition," the wizard goes into the resizing process, but fails very soon after entering the process. It spits up an error message, saying that "FAT and NTFS resizing failed."

Any idea why the installer keeps failing? Or, any idea what else I could do to partition the HD in such a way that windows xp and mandrake can dual boot?

Thanks in advance for any tips you might have!

Welcome to LQ :)

It seems drakX can have problems when the free space actually has data scattered about it, so try defragmenting it first. Otherwise, use PartitionMagic to resize it.

Yeah, I defraged the disk using both the regular windows utility and then using another program to do a boot defrag, but I guess neither fully cleared off the back half of the disk. I suppose I'll try Partition Magic. Thanks for the tip!

No problem. I have never used drakX so I can't speak for it, but I have successfully resized hundreds of partitions with PM so I am sure you'll be all set with that.

If you truly loathe losing your winXP partition, then stop now. It's very easy to lose your data at this point. If I were you I'd get another hard drive and dual boot that way.