Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

[nooby]

For to be able to resize the drive with WinXP
on it I first defragment it and that goes well
even if very slow process. But XP tells me it
fail to move a file way up in the end of the space.

Say 112 GB and this file is way up in 100 or 95 something.
Could it be the famous recycling or what the name is.

I remember that there where some trick one could
do to take it away and recreate it further down?
But that where way back in 2008 something and I have no
idea now how to do that.

Can one move it using gparted? What happen with WinXP
if one simply ignore that it is there? Tell gparted to resize it anyway?

There are two such files that can not be moved. How can one find out
their names. Defrag does not tell the names.

[Makoto]

If I remember correctly (and I could be wrong), one of the files Windows can't move during a defrag operation is the swapfile/virtual memory pagefile.

(Were they using pagefile.sys in XP? I can't remember. pagefile.sys is probably an NT-branch convention, anyway...)

I can't remember whether or not XP has a Recovery Console, or whether or not you can defrag from there, Safe Mode, or when booted from an XP install disc. (Or whether or not things like UBCD include a defragger.)

[nooby]

Thanks Makoto,

yes sorry that is the correct names. I have one named
pagefile.sys and it us 1536MB big and one
hiberfil.sys which maybe also is way up high in the drive

Can I use gparted to pinpoint where they are?

Or create partitions around them? I try to go into gparted
to see what it says about them?

Surprisingly it does not show it. it says I have 38GB used
which is the WinXP install plus a lot of files that the former
owner put there. I should delete a lot of that but are too lazy
now to look through them all. Would also fragment again.

But I have 73GB free to put ext3 on but how do I save these
files that maybe WinXP needs or do they get automatically
recreated each time one start?

Seems that WinXP has locked it out from Gparted. Everything
grays out can not execute other than total reformat of the drive.
I would prefer to keep winXP .

This computer has a second 100G drive that seems empty.
Can one use that for full install of linux or do they
always want to be of the primary drive?

[SFR]

pagefile.sys & hiberfil.sys

Why wouldn't you simply delete (temporarily) those problematic files?
(They're located in C:\ with 'hidden' and 'system' attributes, by the way.)

To disable hiberfil.sys:
Control Panel -> Power Options -> Hibernate -> Enable hibernation (uncheck)

To disable pagefile.sys:
Control Panel -> System -> Advanced -> Performance (Settings) -> Advanced -> Virtual Memory (Change) -> No Paging File -> Set -> OK -> Reboot
(They hid that option pretty good )

Besides you might delete some of restore points (if you have them) to gain more free space.

HTH
Greetings!

[nooby]

But what happens when I boot into WinXP if they are not there?
I need XP for my smartphone updates and also for DBT TV
to be able to record from Cable TV.

So those are very valueable.

[SFR]

The lack of pagefile.sys may cause problems with low memory (if you have small amount of RAM of course) - it's someting like swap partition in Linux.
hiberfil.sys is the file responsible for hibernation feature, so without it hibernation won't work.
I can't imagine how could it threat the system's stability in general, but I think you could also try an off-line defragmentation, as Makoto suggests, using UBCD or HBCD boot CDs.

Greetings!

[nooby]

I tried to install LM12 on the empty secondary HD 112GB big
but LM12 installer failed to format it to ext3. Not sure
what to make of such message. Should I trust there is
somethign wrong with it? Ishould be able to test it by
using puppy to see if I can write to it or gpart it

okay about those two files. I could maybe give it a chance then.

I would still ahve the problem chainloading from grub legacy
to grub2 on the second partition.

I don't know how to do such either.

Why did they come up with full install when frugal works better?
I don't get it Friendly teasing.

[nooby]

Sad news. My attempt to install LM12 on the secondary HD
made it invisible to puppy and gparted. Now I can only see
the first primary HD.

how can one repair such things? What could ahve happen?

Edit

Pdisk see it even if puppy and gparted does not see it
and report that it has the wrong number of cylinders. 1496
while most boot and such are okay with 1024 instead.

So how can I tell it to correct that thing?

Edit Pdisk seems to have made it visible again
But I maybe have to address the thing about too many cylinders?
What program does such?

I am shrinking it now to have a 10GB partition tehre and then
another such and then rest as a data maybe. Have to test if
it is installable first and to see if it can get booted later

Ooops why does it say that it moves it to the right and shrink it.

It is the other way around seen from my perspective. Something odd ???

Seems to take an awful lot of time. Is that biz as usual?

[nooby]

many hours have gone now so I don't trust that it really works.
But when I want to cancel then it says that cancelling the resizing
can destroy the drive. Is that really true?

[8-bit]

I had more or less the same type of wait when I went to resize one drive partition.
Even after a defrag of the partition in Windows, Gparted gave me a message of "Moving files to front of partition." in the process of a resize of the partition.
So I do not think the current versions of Windows defrag move the files to the front of the partition as one would expect.

On the other comment about the 100 meg free partition that appears to be empty, it could possibly be an image file used for restoration of the computer to factory installation of software.
If you created the recovery CD/DVDs that there should be an option for, you should be able to use that partition for linux and format it as such.

[cthisbear]

" pagefile.sys & hiberfil.sys "

I always delete them.

They will automatically reappear in XP....Vista...Win7

on the next Windows boot up.

Chris.

[nooby]

Thanks to both of you. Then I will do that. Delete them

[Sylvander]

1. The quick and EASY way to PERFECTLY defrag the folder/file contents of a partition:

(a) Use Puppy Linux...and some file explorer...
Here I used SynBack.
Now I normally use Xfe...
To...

(b) COPY the contents of the [Windows?] partition to somewhere handy.

(c) Delete all of the contents of the partition.
It's prudent to have some other [image?] backup in case anything goes wrong.

(d) Resize the EMPTY partition, if that's wanted, otherwise omit this step.
Make sure it's still big enough to hold the planned contents.

(e) Move [or copy and then delete the originals] the copy back to the partition.
The copied files within the newly resized partition will be [almost] perfectly contiguous and in order.
The imperfection consists of a small empty working space left at the start of the partition.

2. The above method is MUCH faster than a normal defrag.
(a) It is also more nearly PERFECT.
(b) You have a backup copy of the partition contents as a natural part of the method.

[nooby]

Thanks Sylvander, I had forgotten about that one and the reason is
that I would have asked for how does one do backups?
I have never done such apart from making a copy of the savefile.

So that is why I forgot about that method. Maybe you where the one
suggesting this method that time too. Much appreciated but I have
no idea how one do back ups. Are we talking puppy doing a back up
of windows or using Clonezilla and others such software?

[Sylvander]

1. Do you have Xfe installed?
Or....

2. Are you prepared to attempt to install Xfe?
Or...

3. Which alternative file manager would you like to use to [attempt to] do the copy and restore of partition contents?