Debian dual boot with Windows 7

[Jerry Feldman]

On 05/08/2010 05:01 PM, James Kramer wrote:
> Knoppix did not run properly on the system. The latest Ubuntu 10.04 64
> bit seems to work well.
>
> I am now working to repartition the hard drive.  Windows has a tool to
> do this.  I first needed to defrag the disk.  I have a 1Tb  hard
> drive.  After defrag by Window only 500Gb was available for a new
> partition.  Windows stores a few sectors in the middle of the hard
> drive.
>
> I used Perfect Disk to defrag on the default settings and I was not
> able to reduce the size of the defrag.  It did not remove the excluded
> sectors in the middle of the disk.
>
> I guess that I can use Gparted to repartition but I do not know what
> data is stored in the middle of the partition.  Does anyone have any
> suggestions?  I do not want to allocate 500Gb to a Windows partition.
>
>  =20
One of the issue with Windows is they have "unmovable" files. The defrag
not only will not move some of the critical files used in boot, but also
"hidden" files. Some vendors allocate 2 partitions for Windows, one is
the main Windows partition, and the other is a recovery partition.
Gparted will allow you to move an entire partition. So, if you have
resized /dev/sda1 (eg C:) and you have free space between it and
/dev/sda2, you can move /dev/sda2 to be adjacent to sda1. That will
consolidate all your freee space, so you can allocate the third physical
partition as an extended partition.

Another trick if you have 2 Windows partitions leaving a hole, you can
use LVM to essentially fill the hole.

--=20
Jerry Feldman <gaf-mNDKBlG2WHs at public.gmane.org>
Boston Linux and Unix
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