1 Topic by simonlovejoy

  • simonlovejoy
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Topic: Creating new partition on Windows XP drive?

I just wanted to clarify with folks in the know before i do something silly...

i have a 250gb SATA drive, NTFS formatted, with windows xp professional installed.

GParted looks like something i could use to:

a). either expand the size of the one partition so that i can install another OS on my machine, or

b). add/create another partition on to my drive to install the new OS in?

Must apologize for being dense but i tend to make big mistakes when working with partitions so i wanted to hopefully run this by you ladies and gents first before it all ends in tears and i have -no- partitions smile

2 Reply by class413

  • class413
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Re: Creating new partition on Windows XP drive?

To install a new operating system, you need at least a new partition. For this new partition, you need some unallocated space on the hard drive. If the existing partition takes the total disk capacity, you have to shrink this partition to make the necessary space.

For this work, you can use the GParted livecd. This comes as an ISO file to burn on a CDR disc as ISO image (not data cd). You boot the computer from this cd.

Please be sure that you have backup of important files before any partition modification. Read the documentation before proceeding.

(Topic moved to the live media section)

*** It is highly recommended to backup any important files before doing resize/move operations. ***

3 Reply by ecstech

  • ecstech
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  • Registered: 2009-01-23
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Re: Creating new partition on Windows XP drive?

Strictly speaking you don't need to make a new partition if all you are doing is adding another copy of XP Pro. I usually create 2 copies of my XP Pro sp3 and keep one as a basic build backup.

You just specify another directory. smile