How should I use parted to shrink Windows, and install GNU/Linux?
With parted, it is possible to resize your Microsoft Windows partition, to create room to install GNU/Linux. This process shouldn’t result in any damage to Windows, although we make no guarantees 😉 Note that this is only possible if your Windows partition is either FAT12, FAT16 or FAT32. If parted is unable to achieve what you want, then it should say so, rather than damaging your data (again, no guarantees). The easiest method is to use a rescue CD with parted on it: • Create and boot the rescue CD. • Start parted: # parted parted will display this message: Warning: The operating system thinks the geometry on /dev/hdb is 2586/240/63. Therefore, cylinder 1024 ends at 7559.999M. You should check that this matches the BIOS geometry before using this program. You can ignore this, provided you follow step 3. • Have a look at your partition table: (parted) print Disk geometry for /dev/hdb: 0.000-19092.937 megabytes Disk label type: msdos Minor Start End Type Filesystem Flags 1 36s 19.1GB
