On my laptop I have a 100GB hard drive, which came partitioned 50/50 into two partitions. Windows, in its infinite wisdom has piled DLLs and other files onto the D: partition (as it had the most free space), which I tried to leave empty. Now I'm finally getting around to installing Linux on my laptop, and obviously I need to change the partitions. Ideally I want one partition with Windows on, one for most Linux files, a /home partition and a swap partition. The problem is clearing my current second partition, as obviously I don't want to delete a load of DLLs and other app folders, only for the whole lot to go. One suggestion was to just resize it so that it effectivly is filled with the files currently on it, and use the created free space for Linux, but this just seems a bit clumsy. Any suggestions?

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you have to format the particion you want to "cut", there are no other obcion

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Resizing your partitions would definently work just fine, but what I would do would be to save all your important files, format your drive and start over. Then create a partitioning scheme using FDisk or Partition Magic like this:

Windows: 40 GB
Linux: 40 GB
Home: 15 GB
Swap: 5 GB

That is what I would do.

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the swap depend on your memory the minimun recomended is the double of you fisical memory

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Well reformatting the drive isn't really an option as I don't have the Windows CD, the UK manufacturers are nice like that I have 1GB of RAM, so I was going to create a swap of maybe 2.5GB.

I thought you could cut space off the end of a partition, without losing the data on it?

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partition magic. get a demo. it should do the trick. works wonderful for me. or you can download it from some file sharing thing.

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Partition magic does this job without problems, but don't forget to make a backup of your disk before starting. Some programs for that are 'Ghost' or 'Acronis Image'.

You have to lead a small D-drive with the DLL for windows.
Most likely the DLL files are not from windows itself but from some programs you have installed afterwards.
So if you delete them you have to reïnstall those programs (without D-drive.)
About the Swap space, most of the times 1,5 times your RAM is enough since you already have 1GB.
Unless you want to do some video editing or some other programs that need a large amount of memory.

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