Reducing an existing Linux partition for Windows use....

[der.hans]

Am 13. Sep, 2008 schwätzte Dan Lund so:

moin moin Dan,

> Okay, I'm pulling the pistol away from my head now, but I'll need to
> use Windows on my desktop in order to play Spore now that it is

Spore looks really, really cool. The DRM crap looks really, really evil.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/09/10/spore_drm_amazon_effect/
http://www.boingboing.net/2008/09/07/amazon-reviewers-clo.html

Wow, they really got some people to post against them.

5 star: 	3% 	 (73)
4 star: 	2% 	 (50)
3 star: 	0% 	 (21)
2 star: 	2% 	 (57)
1 star: 	90% 	 (2,018)

http://www.amazon.com/review/product/B000FKBCX4/ref=dp_db_cm_cr_acr_txt/002-5356881-7975207?_encoding=UTF8&showViewpoints=1

Hmm, that negative review makes it sound like they dropped out some of the
cool features as well :(.

> finally out.  The problem is, it's a Linux box and has been ever since
> it's purchase.
>
> I have CentOS (free RHEL clone), and what I'm looking to do is
> throttle down the size of main partition to use it for Windows.
> My question is, what is the easiest method to do this nowadays?  I'm
> not terribly worried about losing the MBR, since I can boot up with CD
> and run grub to make it boot in the proper way again.
> I haven't done something like this since.. geez.. 2001 maybe?  My
> memories totally shot.

Make sure you have free space on the partition you're wanting to shrink,
then resize the filesystem to be smaller and then resize the partition to
be smaller.

Google for whatever filesystem type you have with resize and shrink and
you should come up with step by step instructions.

GNU parted can resize ext2, ext3, linux-swap and reiserfs in addition to
resizing the partition.

ciao,

der.hans
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