Issue resizing Windows partition

English Install/Boot/Login
1

I have an HP desktop with a 150 gb hard drive and 7 GB as a recovery partition.

I inserted the openSUSE 11.0 kde 4 LiveCD. In the install window for the partitioning area, it suggests splitting the harddrive half for XP and half for Linux. See http://img300.imageshack.us/img300/4096/snapshot1kk9.png

But I want it to be mostly for XP so I went to the expert partitioner and chose to resize.
http://img176.imageshack.us/img176/2259/snapshot2ux2.png
http://img391.imageshack.us/img391/6940/snapshot3nq5.png

However, while the extended partition shrunk, the Windows partition was still listed at 70 GB. http://img176.imageshack.us/img176/8506/snapshot4or8.png

Furthermore, back at the main partitioning window, there is no mention of root and swap partitions. http://img214.imageshack.us/img214/2153/snapshot5jv9.png

Any insight?

2

I seem to be having the exact same problem as the person in this post: Resizing Partitions During Install - openSUSE Forums but that person didn’t look like his problem was solved.

Anyone have any ideas?

3

macosxp@

You can’t resize a mounted partiton.
So reboot and then first thing open a console and enter su and then enter umount /dev/sda2. Then goto Yast partitioner and try the resizing.
Do it in that order, doing nothing to cause the partition to remount before you resize it.

If the console command (umount) returns a statement that sda2 isn’t mounted then that’s OK, but if it returns some other error message, that’s probably not OK and you should report that error message back here.

4

Oh I think I understand. Since in the LiveCD it mounts Windows to access give you access to your HD, it can’t resize it. I am a little surprised that it can resize it to 70GB but not a custom amount, as I am surprised that information about this is not presented to the user from within the GUI, but we’ll see.

I’ll try what you said and report back to you. Thanks!:slight_smile:

5

All right I did what you said, and it did say that it’s not mounted, but when I went back to the installer and tried to change the partition size the same thing happened as I describe in my original question.

And hey, guess what I see the Edit button now. :slight_smile:

6

Then you’ll have to use a better partitioner, like Gparted. It’s very versatile.

Of course, defrag the NTFS partition first from inside windows and make sure there is spare space on it even after you size it down.

Use SystemRescuCD which is a downloadable CD with Gparted on it. You burn the CD then boot off it. Accept the boot defaults (just press enter if it gives you choices). Then when it’s finished booting enter the command startx to get the GUI. The you’ll see a console open – enter gparted into that and away you go.

7

Okay I’ll try… so I use this before installing openSUSE to shrink the Windows partition, and then when I get back into the LiveCD installer Windows will already be the right size and SUSE will only try to work off of the unused space?

And BTW: Yes I have defragmented.

8

Yes, that’s the theory

9

I like to keep around a dedicated CD to boot to that has clonezilla and gparted on it. I just use that CD to create images, and resize partitions.

Index of /GParted-Clonezilla

10

Hey, is it possible to resize the partition after installing openSUSE (I mean via openSUSE and not extra software)? Maybe if I can shrink the openSUSE partition and can allocate the extra free space to Windows while inside XP?

11

You can’t shrink a Linux partition while you’re using it (i.e. while it’s mounted). Thus you would need to use an external CD with like GParted on it.