How to shrink partition in XP?

I've got WinXP running, and I've got a 120GB drive set as my OS drive (I also have an 80GB 'media' drive, but that's not important).

I want to set up a dual-boot environment, so I want to shrink the 120GB drive's Windows partition (which is currently taking up the entire drive).

Is there a way to do this?

 

[AFB]

Right click on the drive and click format. Click start. It will only remove the unused space

 

Originally posted by: amdfanboy
Right click on the drive and click format. Click start. It will only remove the unused space

Sure sure. I know that Mandrake's new installer has a partition resizer, but I was hoping to give Debian a shot.

 

[Crusty]

Partition Magic will do this just fine.

 

Originally posted by: MCrusty
Partition Magic will do this just fine.

10-4. I'd rather not pay for it, is there a free program to do it?

 

[dawks]

Originally posted by: jumpr

Originally posted by: MCrusty
Partition Magic will do this just fine.

10-4. I'd rather not pay for it, is there a free program to do it?

Not that I've ever heard of. Could exist though.

Its not exactly an easy process to mess with partitions in that way, so not everyone makes a program to do so.

 

[thegorx]

I use ghost to image the partition
delete the old partition
then create new partitions the restore the ghost to the now smaller partition.

 

[TrentSteel]

Originally posted by: DaZ

Originally posted by: jumpr

Originally posted by: MCrusty
Partition Magic will do this just fine.

10-4. I'd rather not pay for it, is there a free program to do it?

Not that I've ever heard of. Could exist though.

Its not exactly an easy process to mess with partitions in that way, so not everyone makes a program to do so.

I've done a fair amount of searching for a free/open source solution, but none exists. Someone please correct me if I'm wrong.

The Ghost idea mentioned above makes sense.

 

[bdjohnson]

Originally posted by: MCrusty
Partition Magic will do this just fine.

i agree. pm is great.

 

[kamper]

well, if the mandrake installer does it you could go through with that installation process until you are finished the partitioning part, abort and then go use debian

 

[saxophonoia]

Originally posted by: TrentSteel

Originally posted by: DaZ

Originally posted by: jumpr

Originally posted by: MCrusty
Partition Magic will do this just fine.

10-4. I'd rather not pay for it, is there a free program to do it?

Not that I've ever heard of. Could exist though.

Its not exactly an easy process to mess with partitions in that way, so not everyone makes a program to do so.

I've done a fair amount of searching for a free/open source solution, but none exists. Someone please correct me if I'm wrong.

The Ghost idea mentioned above makes sense.

Yeah a while back I searched for it a lot and found nothing. I just went ahead and got Partition magic. It works great.

 

Originally posted by: kamper
well, if the mandrake installer does it you could go through with that installation process until you are finished the partitioning part, abort and then go use debian

Yeah, I suppose that is the cheapest option. I just gotta read up some more on Debian first...it's not exactly elementary!

 

[LemonHerbWRX]

User disk manager that is built into XP. Convert to a dynamic disk, and then you can resize it.

 

[mikecel79]

Originally posted by: LemonHerbWRX
User disk manager that is built into XP. Convert to a dynamic disk, and then you can resize it.

You can add to a volume but you can't shrink an existing volume that was convert from a standard disk. As a matter of fact you can't expand a simple volume that was converted over from a simple disk either.

 

[LemonHerbWRX]

Hmm, so you can't. I had never really tried it before just now.

 

[CQuinn]

Its not exactly an easy process to mess with partitions in that way, so not everyone makes a program to do so.

I've done a fair amount of searching for a free/open source solution, but none exists. Someone please correct me if I'm wrong.

You're wrong

Ranish Patition Manager

http://www.ranish.com/part/

Free but a bit hard to use AFAIR

ntfsresize
http://mlf.linux.rulez.org/mlf/ezaz/ntfsresize.html

supported in many linux distros, and recently updated.


I haven't used any of the Linux solutions, partly because I still prefer Partition Magic.

 

[Zelmo3]

What about FIPS?
I don't know if it works with NTFS (FAQ and DOC don't say), but I've used it with FAT once or twice with good results.
FIPS and DELPART were good friends of mine when I was first toying with Linux.

 

[HKSturboKID]

With harddrives so cheap now-a-days. Just get another drive and your problem is solved. Look in the hotdeals and people are raking in 160gb for under $40.

 

[Willoughbyva]

The mandrake installer will do it. I did it with mandrake 9.1 just to see if it would work. The only thing is if there is data on the end of the drive it woun't do it like partition magic would. It will just resize where the data stops. Good luck.

 

[Sianath]

With dynamic disks, we support extending a dynamic disk volume if the volume was created after the disk was converted to dynamic. With a basic disk, we support extending a partition with diskpart.exe as long as it is not a system partition. Neither will allow you to make a partition smaller however.

If it's a basic disk, you can edit the disk directly using DiskProbe.exe to resize the partition, but you risk dataloss if you have files stored near the end of the partition. In addition to that, you will be losing usable space if you have other partitions created because Windows won't use the now-free disk space in the creation of any new partitions at the end of the disk.

If you have questions about doing that, let me know. We don't support it, but I'll entertain questions. =P