Preserving data whilst upgrading to Sarge

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goweropolis · #1 Post by **goweropolis** » 2005-10-12 21:49

Hi guys,

I'm looking for some suggestions.

Here's the scoop. I have WinXP installed with 2 hard drives, one 30 GB and one 120 GB. Both drives are formatted in NTFS. I am interested in upgrading to Sarge, but I need to preserve about 40 GB of data.

Is it possible to do something like this:
1. clear space on 120 GB drive so I have 60 GB free
2. use this to partition the NTFS drive creating a new 60 GB FAT partition
3. copy the 40 GB from the NTFS partition to the FAT partition
4. use this to remove the NTFS partition and create a second 60 GB FAT partition

Is this a nutso idea? What are the odds of me losing my data?

Looking at the GNU Parted webpage, it appears that I may not be able to resize the NTFS partitions on my drives. Any other suggestions for preserving the data?

dawgie · #2 Post by **dawgie** » 2005-10-13 12:07

The newer versions of qtparted and gparted allow you to resize NTFS partitions.
http://gparted.sourceforge.net/features.php
http://qtparted.sourceforge.net/features.en.html

I would suggest removing all of the trash, temporary internet files, and cached html files from your windows partitions first. Then do a defrag before resizing.

If you have a CD burner, save your important files on a CD.

goweropolis · #3 Post by **goweropolis** » 2005-10-13 15:50

Thanks for the useful tips Dawgie!