2 OS on one drive

[Overkiller]

Hey all,

My friend has a dell w/ a 40Gb hard drive and has XP pro installed on this drive. he wanted to partition the drive and install linux on the unused portion (he is only using 15GB out of the 40 so a 50/50 split is possible).

He does not want to delete anything (i.e. fdisk/reformat/reinstall on 2 partitions). Is there any way that he can do this/any software available?

Thanks!

 

[Vegito]

parition magik can do it..

 

[MedicBob]

Search Dual Boot on Google.

Plus see the FAQ's about dual booting.

Alot depends if his 40 Gig is partitioned as one big drive. If he only has 15 Gig partitioned for Xp and the rest free, it is very simple. If not he should free up room on the drive. The FAQ's covers it pretty well.

here is the link: Dual Boot with LILO

 

[Willoughbyva]

Mandrake 9.1 will resize NTFS if there is no data at the end of the drive. Otherwise you will have to get Partitionmagic or some such software to shrink and repartition the drive. It seems unclear if there are already 2 partitions or if you need to resize and make another partition?

 

[MournSanity]

Partition Magic makes it easy for beginners, although I'm sure there are other free programs out that that are harder to use.

 

[Overkiller]

thanks for the help guys.

At rocks

 

[GonzoDaGr8]

Partition Magic will probably be your easiest/safest bet. But as Willoughbyva said, During install of Mandrake 9.1 or 9.2 you are given the option to resize your drive to make space for the Linux install. I've done it once on a drive that allready had 2 partitions and 2 OS'es allready on it with not too much sweating. Ended up with a triple-boot, 3 partition system(actually more as Linux will create a partition for swap). Just for precaution, your friend should back up anything important in case anything goes awry. Drive Image or Norton Ghost would be your best bet for that.