How to reclaim some of the space that Windows isn’t using…

Quite often new computers come with Windows installed on one large partition. You may want to use part of that space to install Linux. First you will need to resize that Windows partition and create a new partition from the excess space. You can then divide that up into however many partitions you need for installing Linux.

Two types of filesystems are used on Windows partitions - FAT32 and NTFS. Partition Magic http://www.powerquest.com/partitionmagic/ is a tool which will resize both. There are also free programs to do the job. They will allow you to make a new partition from the excess space existing on the current one that Windows is sitting on. If you have an old machine with Windows 98 on it, it is likely on a FAT32 filesystem. It seems that most of the Windows XP systems coming out today are sitting on NTFS.

The tools, especially FIPS, have safety features to avoid data loss in this process, but they explain in their instructions that you need to backup important data before running them. It is amazing what data you can really do without, but there are some things that you will really miss if things go bad. Back that data up!

You must run the defrag program on the partition. This should move the files together and give you a nice clear space that you can take. You need to figure out how much room you will be needing for Windows and leave some room for growth if you anticipate that. You might want to share some of the data on Windows with Linux. If you have Windows on NTFS, then you need to think about making a shared FAT32 partition for that shared data. Keep in mind that FAT32 is not as secure as NTFS. Mail might not be a good thing to put on it for example.

Linux has come a long way since the days of using FIPS below. Most distros now have resizing of both FAT32 and NTFS as a part of their installation process. In general they use some form of parted, like QtParted below. It is a good idea to defrag your Windows system prior to using these if you want to reclaim the most space possible from your unpartitioned drive.

FIPS and ntfsresize are here mostly for historical purposes.

FIPS http://freshmeat.net/projects/fips/ is the tool used to resize FAT32 partitions. FIPS is found on most installation CDs in a directory like dos or tools or dosutils. The instructions for running it are quite detailed, but this program has been out a long time and is quite safe if used as directed. Be sure to make the backup floppy that they recommend so that you can restore your MBR if things go wrong. This program is not intuitive; so follow the instructions to the letter. FIPS will not work on NTFS.

You can get this tool on a floppy if you get Kent Robotti’s Recovery Is Possible (aka RIP). http://www.tux.org/pub/people/kent-robotti/looplinux/rip/

This great little rescue disk can be put on cdrom or if you look down the page, you will see a version for a 1.44 floppy. It has a long help text that will tell you a lot about basic rescue techniques. And it has this program for resizing ntfs. Important note: This tool does not change the partition size. It changes the filesystem size. To shrink the partition size, first use ntfsresize to shrink the size of the filesystem. Defragging is not necessary. After resizing the filesystem, you can use fdisk to delete and recreate the partition with a smaller size. Qtparted below uses ntfsresize.

Note the importance of beginning the new, smaller partition on the same cylinder as the larger one which was deleted. Also, note that the new partition may not be smaller than the shrunken filesystem size. Only common sense there. See manpage: http://linux-ntfs.sourceforge.net/man/ntfsresize.html

QtParted http://qtparted.sourceforge.net/ will resize NTFS partitions as well as FAT32. SystemRescueCd http://www.sysresccd.org/ is one of many disks you can use to run it. The SystemRescueCd iso is about a 100Mb download. Make a CD from the iso and then boot it on your system selecting fb800. At the command prompt do “run_qtparted”. You will then be presented with a nice GUI partition resizer. You can find QtParted on the Knoppix CD as well.