Dual boot windows 2008 server and xp

Whilst following these steps is an invaluable method for learning about the structure of disk partitions, it is important that you understand that errors in performing the following steps may result in loss of data. With that warning out of the way we can proceed.

Within the next screen, select a mirror from the list and look for a link to download the Live CD image. This will typically be named as follows:. The system will boot CentOS and you will have a fully functional CentOS environment to use during the repartitioning process. Once CentOS has loaded, log in and open a terminal window right click anywhere on the desktop and select Open in Terminal. In the terminal window, gain root privileges by executing the following command:.

The fdisk tool is installed by default but the ntfsresize tool is not part of the standard CentOS distribution or installation repositories. Instead, we need to install from a different source. To enable access to the required repository, one of the following commands must be run depending on whether you are running a bit or bit version of CentOS:. Now that we have installed the tools we need, the next step is to identify the disk drive on which the Windows partition resides.

This is achieved by running the fdisk command as follows:. Depending on your system configuration you may see different results for example if you have multiple disk drives or the disk drive contains more than one partition.

Having identified the disk and partition, we now need to find out how much unused space is available within the partition for us to free up. To obtain this information we use the ntfsresize tool as follows:. The output from ntfsresize for our example tells us that we can safely free up MB of disk space by shrinking the specified Windows partition.

In practice, however, you will want to leave space on your Windows system for storing future data, so it is recommended that you do not shrink the partition to the full extent available.

For the purposes of this example, therefore, we will shrink the partition to MB. Before performing the live resize, it is best to run through a simulation in order to identify any potential problems before permanent changes are made. To do this, run ntfsresize with the —no-action option:. Assuming the read-only test runs successfully, the actual resize can be performed by running the same command, but this time without the —no-action option:.

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Follow Following. Now that we have installed the tools we need, the next step is to identify the disk drive on which the Windows XP partition resides. This is achieved by running the fdisk command as follows:. Since the Boot column contains an asterisk we also know this is a bootable partition.

Depending on your system configuration you may see different results for example if you have multiple disk drives. Having identified the disk and partition we now need to find out how much unused space is available within the partition for us to free up.

To obtain this information we use the ntfsresize tool as follows:. The output from ntfsresize for our example tells us that we can safely free up MB of disk space by shrinking the Windows partition. In practice you will want to leave space on your Windows system for storing future data, so it is recommended that you do not shrink the partition to the full extent available.

For the purposes of this example we will shrink the partition to MB. Before performing the live resize, it is best to run through a simulation in order to identify any problems before permanent changes are made. To do this, run ntfsresize with the —no-action option:.

Assuming the read-only test runs successfully, the actual resize can be performed by running the same command, but this time without the —no-action option:. At this point we have reduced the size of the NTFS partition but the partition does not yet know we have done so.

If, for example, we use fdisk to tell us about the partition the partition table information still indicates the original size:. In order to address this we will have to delete the partition information and then recreate it with the new size information. Before doing so, make a note of the Start and Id values for the partition provided by the above fdisk command yours will possibly differ from the example and we will need these when we recreate the partition.

Begin by starting fdisk with the name of the disk drive on which we are going to modify the partition table information:. Next, we need to recreate the partition with the new size information keeping in mind that we reduced the partition to MB :. Next, the Id of the partition needs to set to the original value as indicated by the fdisk —l command in this case 7 to indicate the partition uses the Windows NTFS format :.

The resize is now complete and you can reboot the system.