Install on new computer keeping OEM OS

[Matthew Saltzman]

On Sun, 2009-12-13 at 06:25 +1100, David Timms wrote: 
> On 12/13/2009 05:38 AM, Alan Evans wrote:
> > I just got a brand-new machine with Windows 7 pre-installed on its
> > massive hard drive. Of course, Fedora is more my style, but I'd like
> > to keep the original OS intact and dual boot.
> > 
> > My question is this then: How safe is it really to allow the installer
> > to resize the existing partition with Win7 already there? I saw that
> > it had the option, but I was terrified to try it.
> Some would say partitioning is a process that always requires a backup,
> hence:
> - create a compressed backup of the new raw disc onto the old disk
> - run the resize during install
> - if it all goes foul, you have learnt how to create and use a backup.
> 
> That said, I haven't seen anything go wrong with gparted / parted, well
> ever (in my memory, including expanding and shrinking an xp machine
> original ntfs drives, to fit linux). I quite often do the non-backed up
> version of messing with partitions on virtual machines without trouble.
> gparted indicates support for ntfs shrink.

I hate to relate that I just had a very bad experience with resizing and
moving an NTFS partition using gparted.  While you are probably OK
shrinking in place, I'm now with the school that says back up at least
the critical stuff before you try a stunt like that, especially on NTFS.

Good luck.


-- 
                Matthew Saltzman

Clemson University Math Sciences
mjs AT clemson DOT edu
http://www.math.clemson.edu/~mjs