Computers 'n Stuff: Resizing NTFS partition on a HP-Omnibook XE3-GF to install SUSE Linux 9.1

I here share the resolutions for my Linux problems so they might safe somebody some time.

Saturday, March 25, 2006 parmanent link to this post

Resizing NTFS partition on a HP-Omnibook XE3-GF to install SUSE Linux 9.1

With only one Windows partition on my laptop I wonted to set up a dual boot system without installing windows new. SUSE v9.1 pro claimed to support dual boot installations over windows installations by default, so it should be a pice of cake. Though, it turned out that this was a harder task than i thought.
During installation, YAST failed to resize the NTFS partition C:\ wich Windows XP was installed to, though I followed the documentation:
I defragmented the hard drive to move empty space to the end of the partition.
I swiched of virual memory because windows defrag cant defragment (pagefile.sys).
Moreover I Figured out that you also have ot disable hibernating
- (Start/settings/Control Pannel-Power Options

Then on page Hibernate uncheck the checkbox "Enable hibernate support") -
since the hibernating file on the harddrive (hyperfil.sys) can not be moved by defrag either.
Though Yast still failed to resize the NTFS partition.

Consulting the 90 days installation support was worthless. They answered my support question by copy pasting the answeres from their faq database. This is pretty much useless since i already read all these faqs before wich didn't help and then decided to contact the support. And they only came up with the same crap. (omg X-() Finaly they said this would be a windows problem. IMHO this could not be true since the resizing algorithm of Yast failed and not the defragmentation. So I had to solve this problem on my own althoug I payed for this worhtless 90day installation support. crazy.

Finally I found out what the problem was. HP Omnibooks have a hidden recovery partition that you cant detect with winows explorer so I wasent aware of it. This recovery partition happens to be the first partition on the hardrive /dev/hda1 Win95 FAT32 LBA. reported to be free and Yast needs the windows partition c:\ to be the first partition.

You can change the size of the windows partition only in expert mode but then it works.



Links:
SUSE LINUX on IBM Laptops from pro-com
How to use ntfsresize from the command line
Dual Booting Linux and Windows NT/2000/XP
NTFSresize manpage
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