Can I get Blag 9002 to resize XP NTFS partition?

[chris h]

So I've spent a while today & yesterday looking at how I can make my laptop ideologically pure. The problem I've hit is how to make new disk partitions for the OSs to live on (I figure I want 1 XP / NTFS, 1 linux and 1 shared FAT32).

There's no way to partition the hard drive from within XP, unless i go
buy some resizing software for ~$60. If I use my BLAG CD (9002) it seems to want to overwrite the existing partition, which would be ok except that the XP CDs I have are System Recovery only and they depend on the disk image remaining on the C drive. If that goes I apparently have to buy a full restore disk from godknowswhere.

With me so far?

And if so, am I missing anything? I was wondering if the Linux Rescue mode includes something like "parted" and if I'm right in thinking that could do me a Non-destructive partition resize?

My other option might be to get hold of a LiveCD distro that has qtparted (?) and try and use that to alter the partitions.

Or am I just completely off on one?

Any advice gratefully received.

[jebba]

You're best bet may be to use something like knoppix to boot up and then resize. That said, I've never done it myself.

Or check out this project & look for ntfs-tools. I think there is a resizing tool:

http://linux-ntfs.sourceforge.net/

-Jeff

[mike_m]

I've used knoppix/qtparted to shrink a few NTFS partitions. It's always worked without problems.

Never tried to make one bigger though :)

[Jason]

We all know you can write to NTFS from Linux with a bit of help. Well I found this utility to write to ext2/ext3 from Windows. Quite handy and ends the need to have a shared FAT partition.

http://uranus.it.swin.edu.au/~jn/linux/explore2fs.htm