Dual Boot / Vista and Linux - Question on Shrinking Partition
 

Hi all,

I want to install Linux 5 server on my Vista machine. I have 123g left on my drive, but in the Disk Management/Shrink Box, it shows the following values:

Total Size before Shrink in MB - 46058 - is that 46g? And why doesn't it show my actual disk space remaining on my drive? (123g)

Size of avail shrink space in MB - 68574

Enter amt of space to shrink - 68574

Total size after shrink in MB - 39585

I have heard the server edition takes anywhere from 15 - 180 or so to install, which is it?

If the former, can I enter just 15 in the amt to shrink?

Any other special things I need to do to accomplish this install?

Thanks greatly for any help.

Welcome to LQ!!

What is "Linux 5 server"? (RedHat, maybe?)

Note that there are 2 definitions of empty space:
1. Unallocated (unpartitioned)
2. Unused within a formatted partition.

You only need to shrink a partition if there is no empty space by the 1st definition.

Old conventional wisdom: de-frag before re-sizing partitions. For Vista? no clue.

Server edition.... 180 GB for OS + software? Does not sound right but--regardless--it depends on what you are going to do with the system.

Yes, it is Redhat.

My C: drive is currently partitioned, with 123g remaining. I have plenty of room to shrink it and create new partition for Linux to then dual boot. My questions are exactly as above unless I think of anything more to clarify them.

thx much...

Vista...

It is advised to use the Vista tool to shrink Vista if you hope to retain its ability and willingness to boot. You may not be able to shrink the partition more than by half, as there are Vista files that do not want to move. Defragment first, and if you defragment with this you will see them.

http://www.auslogics.com/en/software...efrag/download

If you need more space than Vista inself provides, use a live-cd such as PartedMagic to provide more, then use these to repair the Vista bootloader. The NeoSmart site has guides on how to proceed.

http://neosmart.net/dl.php?id=1
http://neosmart.net/blog/2008/window...disc-download/

Well, you left it ambiguous---based on the typical Windows install, I will make an educated guess that it is my option #2.

Watch out for the semantics: In the Windows world, the "C:Drive" is actually a partition. Your disk manager or any partitioning tool will tell you all the partitions that you have.

You don't say the total size of the drive.

For starters, I would resize the existing partition down by ~80GB, and then create a Linux partition of ~15GB, plus another 2GB for Swap. Leave the rest unpartitioned for future changes.

So, you might wind up like so:
#1 Windows NTFS 50GB ?
#2 Linux / 15GB
#3 Linux swap 2GB (at the end of the drive)
Balance unpartitioned---More partitions added will be logical:
#4 extended ("wrapper" for logicals)
#5 1st logical
#6 2nd logical
etc.