[CentOS] confidence in partitioning tool (6.2)

Mon Jan 30 23:53:04 UTC 2012
Larry Martell <larry.martell at gmail.com>

On Mon, Jan 30, 2012 at 12:46 PM, Ljubomir Ljubojevic <office at plnet.rs> wrote:
> On 01/30/2012 08:19 PM, Larry Martell wrote:
>>> do they all run with dual-booting Windows/CentOS systems? is their
>>> >  environment filled with laptops running CentOS?
>> This is a new system, but yes, it will be deployed on laptops running CentOS.
>>
>
> My suggestion, and I am assuming you are not very proficient with Linux
> partition/backup tools .

The last time I did that was in 2003 - I was installing Mandrake on an
XP system that I had admin on, and I used Partition Magic to partition
the disk. Since then I've been working on Mac's, Solaris, and RHEL
systems that someone else was administrating.

> So, download Hiren's Boot, go to Windows XP
> environment and create "ghost" image of the entire disk. You should be
> able to do it with DriveXML app. Reserve solution is DOS mode and
> running some other backup app. Make sure you also backup MBR.
>
> Make sure created backup is safe on some external storage.
>
> Some backup apps are outdated for W7 NTFS, but Hiren's will warn you if
> you choose such app.
>
> P.S. Hiren's CD also has Linux mode, with Parted and few backup apps,
> for linux.
>
> If you need to resize NTFS partition, do it from Windows/DOS app from
> Hiren's Boot. Linux without NTFS support will not be ableto do it, and
> even with support I would avoid such solution. That same App can create
> free space you need for CentOS and boot partition.
> Linux boot partition must be one of the primary partitions (first 3 if I
> recall correctly), so create a boot partition (best size is > 500 Mb,
> just to be on the safe side and have root for the future. absolute
> minimum is 200MB in my opinion). Then you can create Extended partitons.
> Even Win7 now uses separate ~100MB sized partition and other partitions
> can be Extended ones.
>
> P.S. I also like to create Windows swap partition and move sap file
> there, for smaller fragmentation of the file system.

Thanks much for the pointers!