Buying New Laptop/Notebook

[Archer]

While a 32-bit Windows can run 32-bit programs also and 64-bit programs also. It surely seems that 32-bit Windows is way too cool,

Uh... no. 32-bit is only 32-bit compatible. 64-bit is 32 and 64-bit compatible. that said, a 64-bit install may complain about or not work with 32-bit drivers.

 

[Dawn]

Yeah... get 64 bit if you can. It's better, as long as your hardware supports it. 64 bit Operating Systems support most 32 bit programs without any work done by the programmers. Question answered. =<

 

[prateek203]

Oh. Means I'll need to install two OS, 32-bit and 64-bit.
Anyways, I've bought the laptop...Acer Aspire 5740G with Intel Core i3 and 4GB RAM and 512MB graphics card and 320GB HDD and 15.6" screen...Infact I'm using that right now...So much faster perfomance...Specially after using 256mb RAM with Intel Celron, for years...lol...
But damn, there's only 1 partition :(
There should have been atleast 3, so that I can install one linux and one 32-bit OS. I don't want to format this Windows just for making partitions, even though I've made recovery of it.

By the way, are these recovery disks the exact setup of this Windows 7 Home Premium? I'm not so sure :(
But great laptop...I like the keypad a lot...Looks cute :P

 

[donavannj]

You can change the size of a partition from within Windows 7... but I think you can only do so if you have Windows 7 Professional or Windows 7 Ultimate.

 

[Dawn]

Eeeh, don't worry about it. You don't need a 32 bit OS, or Linux.
Definitely not a 32 bit OS.

If you insist on installing Linux I suggest you seek help setting up a dual boot in a different thread or by VMs or whatnot. I could be wrong, but this thread's purpose seems to have been completed.

 

[prateek203]

I know about dual booting and all. But I'm kinda unsure how to create a partition in Windows 7 Home. I saw the option, but it says it's juts creating a virtual disk. And it will be saved in a particular image file, on the main partition C: itself. Weird...

 

[Dawn]

I know about dual booting and all. But I'm kinda unsure how to create a partition in Windows 7 Home. I saw the option, but it says it's juts creating a virtual disk. And it will be saved in a particular image file, on the main partition C: itself. Weird...

Here's a tutorial for the built in partition manager in Windows 7, if you insist you need it.

https://www.howtogeek.com/howto/windows-vista/resize-a-partition-for-free-in-windows-vista/

 

[Archer]

Here's a tutorial for the built in partition manager in Windows 7, if you insist you need it.

https://www.howtogeek.com/howto/windows-vista/resize-a-partition-for-free-in-windows-vista/

You can also download a GParted BootCD. It's a live Linux App for managing partitions. My tool of choice. Burn and boot.

And we can't possibly know if the DVDs are recovery or Windows discs without seeing them, now can we?

 

[Dawn]

You can also download a GParted BootCD. It's a live Linux App for managing partitions. My tool of choice. Burn and boot.

And we can't possibly know if the DVDs are recovery or Windows discs without seeing them, now can we?

He just wants to make a separate partition dude. The built in Windows Tool is all he needs for that. It's like, you open it and you right click and click shrink volume and specify by how much and boom you're done.

 

[Archer]

He just wants to make a separate partition dude. The built in Windows Tool is all he needs for that. It's like, you open it and you right click and click shrink volume and specify by how much and boom you're done.

Meh, fair enough. I just know that GParted does the job really well. It works for me, but it may be over the top. I like being able to format in NTFS/FAT/EXT/HFS or anything I need to. Otherwise, if he's just creating a simple extra NTFS partition, then he might as well use the Windows tool.

 

[prateek203]

The inbuilt partition is not really good. I don't want to shrink or expand the already made partition. I want to create a new partition (which will automatically reduce the size of the primary partition). I don't know how to do that using the Windows inbuilt tool.

 

[Dawn]

Okay, let's use some logic

You have say, a 500 GB HD

Your primary partition is automatically 500 GB, the entire thing.

How the heck are you going to create a new partition before you shrink the original one so you have spare space to make the new one with?

You have to shrink the first one first. There's NO other option, no matter what you use.

Just shrink the one you have by the amount you want the new partition to be, and then format the unallocated space into a separate partition.

 

[prateek203]

Ok, say I shrink it to 250GB. What do I do then, to make a second partition of 125 GB and one more of 125 GB?

 

[Dawn]

There should be unallocated space like in the tutorial I showed you. Right click that and select New Simple Volume and select the size you want the partition to be. Then select the letter you want to use for the partition and let it do it's work.

 

[Archer]

Ok, say I shrink it to 250GB. What do I do then, to make a second partition of 125 GB and one more of 125 GB?

I don't mean to come across as rude, but what the hell are you on about? Think of a hard drive like a cake. You have a 500GB cake. You want to give some cake to 32 bit windows, aka. Freddy. You cut as much cake off as you want to give to him, say 200 GB, leaving the original partition, Jimmy, with the remainder of the cake. You now put candles (format as NTFS) on the newly cut section of cake and give it Freddy.

Cake:
- Freddy 200 GB cake
- Timmy 300 GB cake

Install on Freddy's cake. Freddy's cake will now contain the boot manager, where you can pick the cake to boot from.

Freddy and Timmy will be able to access each other's cake.

 

[prateek203]

All you need to cut cake is knief, a random knief, not some specific, right? But to make hard disk partition, you need specific softwrae, and follow specific commands in it. And these commands are what I was asking for. Not the theoretical algorithm (algorithms are way to easy than the effort required to make it work).

But anyways, I've taken care of this yesterday. Made 3 partitions. Though I cannot shrink my original C: partition to less than 162GB, thought its only 40GB filled. I wanted to make it 100GB. I've tried defragmenting the entire disk, removed the fragments present (which was only 3%), still can't shrink it.

Not really a big deal. Atleast I got to create partition. But just curious why Windows doesn't allows to shrink more?

 

[twocows]

All you need to cut cake is knief, a random knief, not some specific, right? But to make hard disk partition, you need specific softwrae, and follow specific commands in it. And these commands are what I was asking for. Not the theoretical algorithm (algorithms are way to easy than the effort required to make it work).

But anyways, I've taken care of this yesterday. Made 3 partitions. Though I cannot shrink my original C: partition to less than 162GB, thought its only 40GB filled. I wanted to make it 100GB. I've tried defragmenting the entire disk, removed the fragments present (which was only 3%), still can't shrink it.

Not really a big deal. Atleast I got to create partition. But just curious why Windows doesn't allows to shrink more?

Why do you want three partitions? You just want two OSes, right? You only need two partitions for that.

Also, he wasn't giving you a theoretical algorithm, he was using a metaphor to try to explain how partitioning works so you could figure it out yourself.

 

[prateek203]

I want three partitions for my own use. "Why" is not a deal. "How" was the issue, which I did now. Again, just curious why Windows doesn't allows to shrink more than 162GB?

 

[Dawn]

Couldn't say. But you definitely cannot shrink a partition to just how much data is on it. It uses the spare space for other things during operation. There is a "Minimum percentage of free space". Once again the problem is too vague for me to say why off the top of my head.

 

[prateek203]

The data was 27.3GB. And I wanted to shrink it to 100GB, which is much more than 3 times!!!