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Hardware - Support => Hard Drives and SSDs => Topic started by: Moltke on October 14, 2017, 10:54:49 PM

Title: Resize Windows partition and increase LL partition.
Post by: Moltke on October 14, 2017, 10:54:49 PM
Hi everyone! Hope you're all having a nice life! A piece of advice please. I'm dual booting Windows 7 and Linux Lite 3.6. LL's partition has only 30gb, but the more I use LL the more I like it and now I want to increase it's size by taking it from Windows'. I've been googling for this and so far every piece of info I've found  says I have to boot from a live cd/usb and do it from there. I also searched the forum but nothing was even closer to what I want to do. I think I have to boot  into Windows and resize it to free some more space for LL, what's not clear to me is whether it'll be possible to assign this unallocated space to LL. Is that possible? Also, after resizing Windows' partition, can I resize LL's partition from within it? Or do I have to boot from a Live usb and do it from there? Thanks in advance for taking the time to answer!
Title: Re: Resize Windows partition and increase LL partition.
Post by: trinidad on October 15, 2017, 10:12:45 AM
It's best to shrink the C: drive Windows partition from Windows. Defragment it first. Use the Windows disk tools to create new free space on the drive - unallocated and unformatted. Windows will not let you shrink the drive more than is possible for the system to still operate.

You may or may not be able to boot into LL after this change. If you can boot you can use the disk tools in LL to attach the free space to the partition LL is on / fs. If you cannot boot into LL use the LL live disk or USB drive and attach the free space to the LL partition. Depending on your knowledge of grub you can also use the "e" editing function in grub to get to a shell and adjust the drive partition UIDs to boot to LL. Once the drive is successfuly partitioned run sudo update-grub and sudo update-initramfs just to be safe. Oftentimes this is unneccessary (depends on the original order of the partitions on the drive, and sometimes block allignment that leaves leftover space).

If Windows refuses to boot afterwards you will have to get to the boot repair functions for Windows which we can solve when you get that far.

TC 

Title: Re: Resize Windows partition and increase LL partition.
Post by: Moltke on October 15, 2017, 11:18:56 AM
It's best to shrink the C: drive Windows partition from Windows. Defragment it first. Use the Windows disk tools to create new free space on the drive - unallocated and unformatted. Windows will not let you shrink the drive more than is possible for the system to still operate.

You may or may not be able to boot into LL after this change. If you can boot you can use the disk tools in LL to attach the free space to the partition LL is on / fs. If you cannot boot into LL use the LL live disk or USB drive and attach the free space to the LL partition. Depending on your knowledge of grub you can also use the "e" editing function in grub to get to a shell and adjust the drive partition UIDs to boot to LL. Once the drive is successfuly partitioned run sudo update-grub and sudo update-initramfs just to be safe. Oftentimes this is unneccessary (depends on the original order of the partitions on the drive, and sometimes block allignment that leaves leftover space).

If Windows refuses to boot afterwards you will have to get to the boot repair functions for Windows which we can solve when you get that far.

TC

Hi @trinidad
So  there's a chance that I won't be able to boot into LL or Windows, both? Hmmm seems too risky. I didn't think about that but makes sense. My knowledge of grub is very very limited, I think I've only used it once when trying Arch and needed to fix something there, and that was like 3 years ago or so and it was a VM. A better/safer foolproof solution would be to reinstall Windows, shrink C partition then reinstall LL. This was my last option but pondering risks and possible results looks like I got no choice but this. I've already backed up everything so it's just a matter of patience and time. I really need to rethink this through. Thanks for taking the time to answer! :)
Title: Re: Resize Windows partition and increase LL partition.
Post by: trinidad on October 15, 2017, 12:10:40 PM
Hi Moltke,

No need to reinstall Windows, and if you're okay with reinstalling LL, go ahead and create the free space with the Windows disk tools and make the free space you ceate, plus the old LL partition and its swap all unallocated unformatted.   

TC
Title: Re: Resize Windows partition and increase LL partition.
Post by: Moltke on October 15, 2017, 01:17:02 PM
Hi Moltke,

No need to reinstall Windows, and if you're okay with reinstalling LL, go ahead and create the free space with the Windows disk tools and make the free space you ceate, plus the old LL partition and its swap all unallocated unformatted.   

TC
Yes, you're right. After posting my last comment I thought "oh wait, I can simply delete LL partition, shrink Windows' and reinstall LL, it's takes only 5 minutes anyway,  so I don't need to reinstall Windows, Phew"  So I think that's what I'll do :). Thanks!
Title: Re: Resize Windows partition and increase LL partition.
Post by: Moltke on October 16, 2017, 05:05:53 PM
Well I made it, now I have plenty of space in the HDD to play around a little bit more with LL. :)