Partitioning and dual boot questions...

[Ichinisan]

Some questions about partitioning and dual-booting:

1. Is it possible to resize my existing NTFS partition with Windows Vista, without reinstalling Vista?

2. Can I have two NTFS partitions, and have each partition seen as "C:" to the operating system installed on it?

I know that a single-partition hard drive can be put into another system as a slave and Windows will temporarily assign a different drive letter than the one specified by the partition. Changing the boot order in the CMOS allows me to boot to either drive, and the booted OS will always see it's drive/partition as "C:". The other hard drive is always accessible with a temporarily-assigned letter. The drive can be removed and reinserted into the original system and will still be called "C:".

I want each partition to be accessible to each install of Windows, but I want the currently-booted partition to appear always as "C:".

I'm sick of obscure compatibility issues that always appear when the installed partition is not "C:". I'm also sick of Windows Vista compatibility issues. I don't have any choice but to dual-boot WinXP and WinVista on the same computer. The new laptop that I gave to my sister has been meticulously cleaned of bloatware and still, inexplicably, begins to perform like molasses when we need to perform a SIMPLE task. All performance and reliability updates are installed and memory usage during the times of unresponsiveness is not at max. Not to mention, there are lots of inherent user interface problems with Vista that are detrimental to my sister's productivity.

Thanks for any answers/suggestions...

 

[Nothinman]

1. Is it possible to resize my existing NTFS partition with Windows Vista, without reinstalling Vista?

Sure, Vista can resize live filesystems on the fly.

2. Can I have two NTFS partitions, and have each partition seen as "C:" to the operating system installed on it?

It's possible but it's more work for practically zero gain. If you're using 2 separate physical drives just pull one while installing to the other. If you're using partitions then you need another boot loader to do some magic swapping of the partition order.

 

[Ichinisan]

It's a laptop, so it's impossible to use two drives. If it is possible with two drives, I simpl expected it to be more easily possible with two partitions on the same drive. I believe I have a work-around. I'll update later.

 

[Navid]

If you have 2 primary partitions, and hide one and make the other active, when you boot to the active partition, it will be C.

You can have a third (always visible) partition for what you want to share. Both OS can access the third partition.