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Advice needed prior to hard drive install
Posted: Wed 13 Mar 2013, 13:18
by old-user
I am currently running Windows 7 and i would like to install Precise Puppy alongside Windows 7. What i would like to know is, could i open up windows 7 and reduce the amount of disk space by about 10 or 20 GB and then create a new partition and swap partition and then carry on the install procedure? Thanks.
Posted: Wed 13 Mar 2013, 13:35
by rcrsn51
Puppy has a tool called Gparted for resizing and creating partitions. But do NOT use it to resize a Win7 partition! There have been reports that it will break Windows.
However, Win7 has a disk management tool that will safely shrink its own partition. Then you can boot off a Puppy CD and run Gparted to build some Linux partitions in the new empty space.
Your next issue will be to install a bootloader on the hard drive that can dual-boot your Win7 and Puppy. If you have no experience with this, I would suggest that you get an old machine to practice on. There is a chance that you could disable your Win7 setup if you make a mistake with the bootloader.
Posted: Wed 13 Mar 2013, 14:43
by old-user
Hi rcrsn51
I do know how to use the disk management tool in Windows and i thought Windows provided a bootloader so as to safely boot either OS. Shall have to wait until i am sure.
Thanks for your reply and helpful advice.
Posted: Wed 13 Mar 2013, 14:54
by rcrsn51
Read
here about EasyBCD.
Also, read
here and
here.
Posted: Wed 13 Mar 2013, 16:03
by old-user
Yes i do have EasyBCD on my machine. Interesting and informative links. Shall have a good read later. Thanks!
Re: Advice needed prior to hard drive install
Posted: Wed 13 Mar 2013, 16:20
by rjbrewer
old-user wrote:I am currently running Windows 7 and i would like to install Precise Puppy alongside Windows 7. What i would like to know is, could i open up windows 7 and reduce the amount of disk space by about 10 or 20 GB and then create a new partition and swap partition and then carry on the install procedure? Thanks.
You can shrink Win 7 from within Win 7 itself.
Defragment and make backup first.
I've used Gparted to shrink Win 7 a few times, but care
must be taken to first defragment Win, and right after
shrinking, boot Win so it runs checkdisk.
This is risky and I wouldn't have done it without a repair
disk and backup image.