(old)Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

One forum member recently did such and ended with some issues which are well documented (or maybe not so well documented if overlooked). With GParted, it will carry out your request, but, this is done with NO knowledge conveyed to Windows such that it is aware of disk changes. As such, when Windows is booted, you WILL experience failure.

The advice for Windows PCs where the Windows boot partition is formatted as NTFS is to use Windows utilities while running Windows to make disk sizes changes. This allows Windows to stay abreast of the filesystem layout.

A Puppy Distro author in 2013 did the following for GParted.

If you have Windows installed on your PC, The advice in the above screen should be adhered to and NOT overlooked when running your Puppy distro. (I am not sure if this warning extends in all PUPs which use GParted.,but, I would hope so).

Here to help

Making windoze not work so you have to use linux seems like success, not failure to me

I once non-destructively resized a neighbors XP partition.

Then his PC would no longer boot.

Managed to fix it using the Puppy Partition File Table restore program [forget its name].

WHEW!

I'd made a 3rd-party image backup before I started.

p310don wrote:Making windoze not work so you have to use linux seems like success, not failure to me

+1

Because there are more appropriate utilities available, it's generally not a good idea to mix'n match.

http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/windows- ... partition/

I don't know what M$ is doing with W8. I have used very recent 64-bit GParted on W7 windows systems in the past two weeks. You can get in trouble fooling with newer UEFI systems with older 32-bit versions. Of course, it is always possible to screw things up any time you fool with partitions, but all I've had to do was restart Windows and run start-up repair. This is usually available through an F-key option at boot, using code on the hidden recovery partition. (Windows users should have a standalone startup repair disk available in any case. I make them for people, using built-in software on Windoze, but most people do not have them.)

If you fool with the hidden recovery partition you had better have a product recovery disk available. Most W7 users don't.

If you resize a Windows partition, you should have it defragmented in advance, and will need to run chkdsk afterward to make things like security descriptors match. If this is foreign to you, you are in trouble.

As for the caution about newer disk types, if you check the latest version of GParted you will find you get a choice between the old DOS style with MBR and the new GPT style used by UEFI systems. In any case, I would advise people to turn off secure boot before trying any partition manipulation on these systems.

Whatever you do, it is important to know what you are doing before you do it. GParted makes changes that usually are not reversible. (While this advice seems to favor using Windows tools I have to admit that I don't know what they are doing either.)

If you don't know exactly what you are doing it is better to use a commercial product like this one by Acronis.

Windows 7 sda1 never touch ! Sda1 is the boot partiton of Windows 7, never touch it if you want to keep your favorite Windows version alive !
Some frenchies don't believe... ok,
About the recovery partition : you are allowed 4 partitions, and i erased this one.
Only one LInux partition was possible on my hardrive (sda3), unless i am idiot ?
Sda2 is my NTFS partition, Sda 4 is Windows partiton, but i dont know what is the usage.

Being a poor housekeeper, i prefer not using Gparted for my Hard drive.
But in my opinion, decreasing sda2 NTFS to make place for Linux Sda3, carefully, is out of danger.

About the recovery partition : you are allowed 4 partitions, and i erased this one.

No need to do so. I have 4 primary partitions on my Compaq CQ57 Laptop.
What I did.
I downloaded.
http://partitionlogic.org.uk/download/
Made a live cd with the iso.
Booted it.
At the partitioner gui. I renamed the /dev/sda2 Windows 7 NTFS from primary
to extended.
Shutdown the laptop.
Pull the cd.
Reboot in Windows 7.
Run Disk management in Windows 7 to shrink the partition I am running on.
You can tell which one because it is the biggest one.
Reboot Windows 7 again when done to make sure everything is OK.

Then boot the Puppy Linux of your choice and you can do what you want
with the unallocated space left over after that operation.
All your stock from the factory partitions are intact and usable.

Anyways. That is how I handle dealing with 4 primary msdos partition limit
on a stock laptop from the factory.

It's possible to move the boot and recovery files from sda1 to sda2. You can remove sda1 and move what used to be sda2 to the beginning of the drive.

I've done it.