Vista as main OS currently

[gizbug]

I know i have to set up a partition in vista prior to putting ubuntu on.

I noticed that My 1 hard drive has two partitions. A 60gig C and a 40gig (logical) D.
Following a guide on here, it is recommend in vista to use the "Shrink" feature. Upon looking at that in vista, it says "Total Size before shrink in MB 57302", Size of available shrink space in MB "26"

If I need 10-20 gig of that, i dont know why its telling me 26


What am i doing wrong?

 

[gizbug]

Any ideas?

 

[Robor]

Edited: I was told that gparted doesn't play nice with Vista's NTFS.

You can resize the partition during the install of Ubuntu using a program called 'gparted' (Gnome Partition Editor).

Note: You have to choose the 'manual' option to setup partitions.

 

[RebateMonger]

Depending what you are doing to Ubuntu, you might consider just running it in a virutal PC window. It's a lot less work than playing with partitions.

 

[tatteredpotato]

Playing around with shrinking partitions can be dangerous.... I destroyed my NTFS once doing that.

 

[Brazen]

Originally posted by: gizbug
I know i have to set up a partition in vista prior to putting ubuntu on.

I noticed that My 1 hard drive has two partitions. A 60gig C and a 40gig (logical) D.
Following a guide on here, it is recommend in vista to use the "Shrink" feature. Upon looking at that in vista, it says "Total Size before shrink in MB 57302", Size of available shrink space in MB "26"

If I need 10-20 gig of that, i dont know why its telling me 26


What am i doing wrong?

You might need to do a defrag before you can shrink it further. It would be wise to do a degrag even before using gparted on the LiveCD.

Also, be sure to back up your important data.

 

[fyleow]

..

 

[Robor]

Originally posted by: fyleow

Originally posted by: Robor
You can resize the partition during the install of Ubuntu using a program called 'gparted' (Gnome Partition Editor).

Note: You have to choose the 'manual' option to setup partitions.

I don't think gparted plays nice with Vista's NTFS.

Ah, thanks for the warning. I haven't done a dual boot with Ubuntu & Vista. I'll update my previous reply.

 

[tatteredpotato]

Is the NTFS in vista different from the NTFS version XP uses?

 

[Nothinman]

I don't think gparted plays nice with Vista's NTFS.

AFAIK NTFS in Vista is exactly the same as it was in XP, there are some changes to the driver itself and the ability for an app to use filesystem transactions is new but everything on MS' site imply that the transactions use existing factilities.

 

[Robor]

Originally posted by: Nothinman

I don't think gparted plays nice with Vista's NTFS.

AFAIK NTFS in Vista is exactly the same as it was in XP, there are some changes to the driver itself and the ability for an app to use filesystem transactions is new but everything on MS' site imply that the transactions use existing factilities.

So gparted would be okay with a Vista file system?

 

[Brazen]

Originally posted by: Robor

Originally posted by: Nothinman

I don't think gparted plays nice with Vista's NTFS.

AFAIK NTFS in Vista is exactly the same as it was in XP, there are some changes to the driver itself and the ability for an app to use filesystem transactions is new but everything on MS' site imply that the transactions use existing factilities.

So gparted would be okay with a Vista file system?

There's only one way to know for sure

 

[Nothinman]

So gparted would be okay with a Vista file system?

That's my belief but I haven't done any testing.

 

[fyleow]

..

 

[Nothinman]

Does Gparted work relatively quickly? I've resized partitions using Partition Magic and they took forever but Vista does it instantly.

Any resize action will only take as long as necessary to move the data so if you're shrinking a filesystem with no data at the end then it should be instantaneous under any tool.

 

[fyleow]

..

 

[Nothinman]

Both have plenty of free space.

Free space can be anywhere, are you sure it was at the end of the volume?