Partitioning a Vista Drive to Dual Boot Kubuntu

I have been looking at various forums for a few days now trying to find out
what the best partition manager would be for what I am trying to do.

System Specs:
Laptop with
Windows Vista Ultimate
AMD Turion-64 X2 2.00 GHz
2 GB RAM
120 GB Hard Drive
Nvidia GeForce Go 7600 256 MB

I have heard of many different partition managers that work with vista and
am wondering which would be the best choice. My Hard drive has only 1
partition at the moment which has 70 GB free space, however Vista will only
allow me to shrink by 2GB. I know about the unmovable system files which is
why I am asking. I have also seen several references to the Gparted Live CD
being able to do what I need it to do. I need to know if the GParted Live CD
will successfully shrink the partition without causing me any data loss. I
am also open to suggestions for other partition managers. I want to know
which is the best choice (preferrably inexpensive or free) and which is least
likely to cause data loss.

Hi,

Bootit NG is a very good choice. You will find several links on the
following page.
Dual Booting Windows Vista & Windows XP:
http://bertk.mvps.org/html/dualboot.html

Regards,
Bert Kinney MS-MVP Shell/User
http://bertk.mvps.org
Member: http://dts-l.org

hazardousracerx wrote:
> I have been looking at various forums for a few days now trying to find out
> what the best partition manager would be for what I am trying to do.
>
> System Specs:
> Laptop with
> Windows Vista Ultimate
> AMD Turion-64 X2 2.00 GHz
> 2 GB RAM
> 120 GB Hard Drive
> Nvidia GeForce Go 7600 256 MB
>
> I have heard of many different partition managers that work with vista and
> am wondering which would be the best choice. My Hard drive has only 1
> partition at the moment which has 70 GB free space, however Vista will only
> allow me to shrink by 2GB. I know about the unmovable system files which is
> why I am asking. I have also seen several references to the Gparted Live CD
> being able to do what I need it to do. I need to know if the GParted Live CD
> will successfully shrink the partition without causing me any data loss. I
> am also open to suggestions for other partition managers. I want to know
> which is the best choice (preferrably inexpensive or free) and which is least
> likely to cause data loss.

> I have heard of many different partition managers that work with vista and
> am wondering which would be the best choice. My Hard drive has only 1
> partition at the moment which has 70 GB free space, however Vista will
> only
> allow me to shrink by 2GB. I know about the unmovable system files which
> is
> why I am asking.

It's possible that the Vista disk manager cannot shrink the partition
because of fragmentation. You could try downloading PerfectDisk which will
thoroughly defrag the drive, including system files. Defragging will tend
to move the files to the left edge of the partition (as viewed in Vista Disk
Management) which will enable you to "shrink" the right edge to make room
for a new partition.

Perfectdisk is available as fully functional 30 day trial-ware.

www.perfectdisk.com

you seem pretty new at this.

why not try Wubi/Kubuntu first?



"hazardousracerx" <hazardousracerx@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in
message news:9C265117-8763-4BA1-B70E-AC347C0AE78B@microsoft.com...
>I have been looking at various forums for a few days now trying to find out
> what the best partition manager would be for what I am trying to do.
>
> System Specs:
> Laptop with
> Windows Vista Ultimate
> AMD Turion-64 X2 2.00 GHz
> 2 GB RAM
> 120 GB Hard Drive
> Nvidia GeForce Go 7600 256 MB
>
> I have heard of many different partition managers that work with vista and
> am wondering which would be the best choice. My Hard drive has only 1
> partition at the moment which has 70 GB free space, however Vista will
> only
> allow me to shrink by 2GB. I know about the unmovable system files which
> is
> why I am asking. I have also seen several references to the Gparted Live
> CD
> being able to do what I need it to do. I need to know if the GParted Live
> CD
> will successfully shrink the partition without causing me any data loss.
> I
> am also open to suggestions for other partition managers. I want to know
> which is the best choice (preferrably inexpensive or free) and which is
> least
> likely to cause data loss.
>
>

I have been working with Linux/Unix for quite a while now, just not on my
personal systems. I used perfect disk 8.0 to defrag and move all the files
and such so that I sould shrink it in windows. That seemed to be the safest
route to take seeing as the shrink utility is built in and all the after
market partition managers aren't... plus it was free for 30 days. I was able
to get about 50 GB that I could have shrunk the drive but only needed 20. I
have sucessfully installed Kubuntu and am learning about how it interacts and
such. I have never before explored linux to this extent and it is a little
frustrating, however I am pretty good at figuring things out on my own, I
just like to ask for advice before I take a leap. The problem i am having
now is setting up networks. Linux does not want to connect to a wireless or
wired network and I cannot for the life of me figure out why at the moment.
I have only had the OS up and running for about 8 hours now so I will figure
it out. Forums are the best place to turn in a pinch and just for advice
from more experienced people. Thanks for all the help everybody and I will
probably return to ask questions about linux because the people in the linux
forums are way over my head at the moment.

"Xenomorph" wrote:

> you seem pretty new at this.
>
> why not try Wubi/Kubuntu first?
>
>
>
> "hazardousracerx" <hazardousracerx@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in
> message news:9C265117-8763-4BA1-B70E-AC347C0AE78B@microsoft.com...
> >I have been looking at various forums for a few days now trying to find out
> > what the best partition manager would be for what I am trying to do.
> >
> > System Specs:
> > Laptop with
> > Windows Vista Ultimate
> > AMD Turion-64 X2 2.00 GHz
> > 2 GB RAM
> > 120 GB Hard Drive
> > Nvidia GeForce Go 7600 256 MB
> >
> > I have heard of many different partition managers that work with vista and
> > am wondering which would be the best choice. My Hard drive has only 1
> > partition at the moment which has 70 GB free space, however Vista will
> > only
> > allow me to shrink by 2GB. I know about the unmovable system files which
> > is
> > why I am asking. I have also seen several references to the Gparted Live
> > CD
> > being able to do what I need it to do. I need to know if the GParted Live
> > CD
> > will successfully shrink the partition without causing me any data loss.
> > I
> > am also open to suggestions for other partition managers. I want to know
> > which is the best choice (preferrably inexpensive or free) and which is
> > least
> > likely to cause data loss.
> >
> >
>