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The time has come: how do I safely resize the C: partition and move Linux to that disk? (lemmy.world)
submitted 3 days ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
18 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/28921393

It may be too much to ask but here it goes:

I have temporarily installed LMDE6 on an HDD where I had a bit of free space, worked with it, experienced Steam with Proton and now I am convinced: I want to move to Linux from Windows for good.

Have another disk, an SSD in which most of the space is taken up by the Windows C: partition. Would like to move Linux there after shrinking the Windows partition a bit more than what it currently occupies now.

I have tried to do this with Paragon on Windows, but after restarting no change can be seen, despite no error being presented. Tried from Linux with GParted but all attempts end up with an error when running ntfsresize.

So

  1. What do I use to do this and how do I do it safely? 2.How do I move the content of my current Linux partition (less than 50 GBs) to that disk keeping the bootloader and everything else working? And what filesystem is best to use?

Thank you in advance for your help!

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Safely? Do you have a backup of the files in that C drive? I f not, do a backup be fore you do anything else as there is always a risk (of losing all your files) when resizing a partition. Sorry that I cannot help more.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 days ago (1 children)

What can I use on Linux to do a backup, assuming it is more complicated than just moving files around?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 days ago (1 children)

The backup type you are aiming for is a full system backup, not just some files. You can do this e.g. with a Clonezilla live CD/USB system.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Does that mean I could back it all up safely on a USB, if I had one of the right size?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 days ago

The medium isn't that important. So I 'd say a large USB stick would be fine as well.
Clonezilla is a bootable live Linux for backup purposes, like e.g. Acronis True Image or others.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 3 days ago (1 children)

I could be wrong, but I thought it was risky to let windows share a drive with Linux

[–] [email protected] 7 points 3 days ago

you are not wrong.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (2 children)

Others have pointed out what may he going wrong (drive locked due to Windows fast startup).

A slightly different tack - dual booting windows and linux on the same drive is a bad idea. One reason is the messy boot set up which can cause issues with windows not booting or linux not booting, or either/both fighting over the boot partition. It can get to the point of using repair disks to repair one or the other or both. It can be managed but make a mistake and its a real headache to fix (I say that as someone who has been their and done that and learned the lesson)

If you want to switch to linux but keep windows "just in case" and have a desktop I'd get a new SSD and use it as a dedicated linux drive. SATA or even better an m.2 card if your motherboard has the slots.

A separate drive is far better as linux can be the drive booted by the BIOS and then Grub can then point back to your untouched windows drive to boot it when you want. If linux updates it won't affect windows, and if windows updates it won't affect linux. Also if you have a drive failure you won't lose 2 OSes and all data in one go.

Personally I have 5 drives in my PC - easy expansion of storage is a big benefit to a nice full size PC. I have one largely unused windows drive, and 4 ext4 drives.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 days ago

A separate drive is far better as linux can be the drive booted by the BIOS and then Grub can then point back to your untouched windows drive to boot it when you want.

this is the way to do it.

i have one system at home set up like this. boot menu's been borked for years by an update. won't boot the other drive, never have bothered to fix it--i just bring up the bios boot drive select and boot it that way.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 days ago (2 children)

I do have 2 M.2 slots available.

Is there any hardware specification I should be pay attention to when buying for exclusive Linux use?

If I was to install one more home partition from the LMDE installation USB, would it automatically fix things for me in Grub or would I have to fix things myself before or after?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Just a possibility: Check if the m2 slot is for disk. There are many boards where there are WiFi exclusive m2 ports. For disks there are also m2 sata and m2 nvme port variations. You need to find out what yours are. Consult your motherboards technical documentation if in doubt. If the BIOS can boot from it, Linux can too.

Edit: that beeing said I never encountered problems with a similar setup ( I boot from Linux on nvme m2 then there is a combined windows /data disk)

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

If I was to install one more home partition from the LMDE installation USB, would it automatically fix things for me in Grub or would I have to fix things myself before or after?

If I understand you right, you want to install two additional SSDs, one for Linux root (system), probably ext4 formatted, and one 'home' for your personal data?

If that's the case, the boot loader GRUB is going to be installed onto the system SSD and will usually automatically detect the Windows boot loader on your current, Windows only, hard drive. If it didn't, you need to toggle an option in GRUB's configuration file and run update-grub again.

For your home-partiotion on the other SSD, there exist two options:

  1. The home partition is Linux exclusive, probably ext4 formatted (this doesn't work with NTFS), and all your data will be stored there. Yet, afaIk, you need to install an ext4 driver in Windows to access the data when you're on Windows.

  2. The home partition is mutually accessible. (This the setup on my wifes laptop). There it's NTFS formatted and the respective folders (Documents, Downloads, Pictures,... ) are mounted one by one using bind in /etc/fstab to their Linux counterpart.

Edit: I've forgot to mention that, first I created folders named Documents, Downloads,... on the new partition before being able to mount them in Linux.

After copying the data in Windows from the old folders to the new ones, the old folders can be deleted and replaced by hardlinks to their new counterparts using the Windows command line or PowerShell.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (1 children)

Did you disable "fast startup" in Windows and shut it down completely?

[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 days ago

Oh man. I don't know how many tmes I got caught by that fast startup fake shutdown bullshit. Good thing you brought it up.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 days ago

the mint installer can resize on the fly, and let you choose how much space to 'take' from windows, during install if you choose 'install alongside windows'. always backup your important stuff first, disable bitlocker (if applicable) and let it finish, and do a full shutdown from windows (shutdown /s /t 0) before installing linux as a dual boot like that.

but since you've already maybe mukked up the partitions, i dunno how that would work. probably need to 'unmuk' the drive first and make sure filesystems & everything are 'ok'.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 days ago (1 children)

I realize I'm not answering your question at all, but if you're "moving to Linux for good", how about taking the whole SSD for Linux and keeping Windows in a VM for the rare times you need it?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 days ago

I thought that would be even more complicated to do.

I have another disk with the SteamLibrary which was on NTFS and shrinking that (to keep Warzone in it, for now) and creating another ext4 partition for the SteamLibrary to play from Linux has been a breeze (using Paragon on Windows).

I originally thought it would be just as simple to do the same with this other disk, but apparently I was wrong.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 days ago

As some others have said, the problem is probably that windows still has the drive locked. When windows "shuts down", it actually is only closing your programs and going into hibernation. This leaves the drive in a read only state, which will prevent you from being able to resize the partition.

To do a full shutdown, you can hold shift while pressing the shutdown button on the start menu. Alternatively run shutdown /s /f /t 0 in a administrative command prompt.