Hi,
can the program "fips" be used to safely partition a hard drive with Windows
XP installed in preparation for a linux installation?
Thanks
--
Peter
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On Sat, 29 May 2004 15:59, Peter H. wrote:
> Hi,
>
> can the program "fips" be used to safely partition a hard drive with
> Windows XP installed in preparation for a linux installation?
>
>
> Thanks
I can't answer for FIPS from personal experience because (due to
circumstances) I've never used it.
Depends on whether the WinXP partition is FAT32 or NTFS. Some of the
documentation I've seen says WinXP uses NTFS, however the only WinXP setup
I've ever tried to resize turned out to be FAT32, much to my surprise.
The way to find out is probably to boot off a Linux rescue floppy such as RIP
(or maybe a Knoppix CD) and see what fdisk says it is. (It's even
possible that WinXP itself may tell you, somewhere in 'My Computer', but I
don't know for sure).
IF it's NTFS, then ntfsresize should do it, and (so I've read) will take
care of moving any files. (Always assuming, of course, that the Windows
partition isn't too full to allow this).
In the case of FAT32, I believe you're advised to run defrag first to
compact all files. In the one case I've tried, I used Ranish Partition
Manager (which is DOS-based, and free*) simply because that's what I had
handy on floppy. (I also had a Knoppix cd-rom with me which apparently has
qtparted on it which (I believe) will also handle repartitioning, but I
didn't know at the time that Knoppix included qtparted).
Anyway, Ranish Partition Manager successfully halved the size of the WinXP
partition, and WinXP ran successfully again with no complaints afterwards.
So it can be done.
This article:
http://www.linuxmigration.com/quickref/install/disk.html
recommends FIPS for Windows 95/98/ME. This is reassuring, since FIPS 2.0
itself seems to have been written sometime around the time of Win95, which
could use FAT16 or FAT32 partitions - but I'm pretty sure by the time WinME
came along, Windows was committed to FAT32.
Usual cautions apply about backing up any vital data first!
cr
(*Ranish Partition Manager is actually shareware - with a ten-year free trial
period. The guy has a sense of humour :)
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