hide half of HD or anyway to install vista on part of HD?

is there any way to 'hide' part of my hard drive so that when i use my recovery cd to install vista again it will only see as much of it as i want? (instead of it installing onto the whole drive)

basically what i want to do is get a triple boot going (vista, xp, linux), but the recovery cd doesnt have any options to install to part of the hard drive (as far as i can see anyway). Is there anyway to partition my hard drive so that vista gets about 50GB, XP gets about 50GB and linux gets the rest?

I just dont want vista to reinstall back to the entire drive and then me have to partition it because vista only lets me shrink it down to 80GB (not small enough) because of some important files at the end of the partition or something..

 

Just create an image of your windows partition and restore that one, when you need it.

DriveImageXML is a freeware that allows you to do that.

You also have to remember to back up your partition structure. The MBR will require you to copy and keep in a safe place the first 512 byte of your hard disk. In linux it can be copied to a file with a simple

Code:

dd if=/dev/sda of=MBRbackup.bin bs=512 count=1

change /sda with your disk identifier.

In case of massive fu**-up, by copying the MBRback (from a linux live CD) you gain back the partition structure (only the first four primary partitions - the logical partitions in the extended partitions are chained and might require additional work), and then you could use a BartPE LiveCD to run DriveImageXML and copy back your Windows partition.

Seems elaborate, but you simply have to put the boot CD in place of the recovery CD and then use the DVD where you stored the image of the Windows partition.

 

so.. create an image of my current vista install? im not sure i follow you. What i want to do is wipe my hard drive (sorry, forgot to mention that) and start all over

 

Oh, sorry. I thought you were still in the "new laptop" phase.
In that case I can't help you. I hate recovery programs that take decisions on my behalf. That's why I clone my partitions as soon as I've customized my install (in fact I also have different images: Clean install, Clean with basic tools, clean with full apps).

All I can suggest to you is to backup all your data, wipe your drive, install with the recovery CD, shrink the OS partition and rebuild your partition structure, customize your OS and then create the image so that next time you won't have any problems.
Then restore your data in the remaining partitions.

(certain recovery programs, HP's I think, respect the existing partition table. I don't know about Asus)

 

dang... hopefully there is a way because vista does not need 80GB of my hard drive. Your suggestion is the only way i can think of too, but thats not going to work with what i need...

what if i used vistas recovery DVD creator program? does that allow me to deal with partitions when i use it?

 

Now it is I who am not following you.
Why is it not going to work?
Because you don't want to /don't have the DVDs to back up all of your data?

I have no idea what you mean with the Creator program.
But if you have a Vista DVD (as it happens with DELL's systems) you could install Vista on your small C: partition without problems.
It will not interfere with the other partitions. The only small problems is that you will have to reintall GRUB in rder to boot Linux (Or you could use EasyBCD to let Vista's bootloader to launch the grub you'll install in Linux's partition).

 

i am not sure if this is what you want but

why not boot from a linux live cd, one you want to install

click on install icon

when it comes down to the partitioner and selecting which partition to install it on select custom instead of resize the partition or whatever

here you will then see all your partitions, erase them all, this way you will just have one large chunk.

right click that chunk and tell it to create a partition, say 50 GB

right click whats left of that chunk and tell it to create another 50 GB partition

then whats left of that chunk, continue installing linux on it (create parition for swap file and what not)

now you have linux installed

just boot from cd for vista and it will see 3 partitions, two empty and one unknown, both the two are 50 GB just install it on one of the 50 GB.

do the same for xp



im not sure if this way will let you see all 3 OS upon startup so what would be better is after creating those partitions in the linux install setup, reboot, install vista, then install xp then install linux


much easier then it sounds, hope it helped

 

it doesnt work because of some problem with vista, it creates important system files in the middle of the partition that cannot be moved for some reason, then when i try to shrink the partition i can only shrink it up to those files.

i dont think i can do that with my vista recovery disk, last time i used the recovery cd it only gave me two options (recover to the entire HD, or to two partitions, one for recovery and the other for the main OS)

 

cant you then install it on two paritions using recovery disk, then use the linux thing to erase the partition on which the recovery was put on and go from there?

 

How desperate are you? You could get a 40GB hard driver, and recover Vista onto it. Then, use a drive copy program or image to move that back to your hard drive, and expand the partition to 50 GB. Its about $50 for a 40GB HD. Can't you hide partitions though, to prevent the Vista installers from seeing them (which should work on your recovery disk if you tell it to recover to the entire HD, so long as it doesn't format).

 

Ah, the old MTF files story.
It's old hat. We've all passed thru them to shrink Vista.
There are several things to do:
1) temporarily disable and remove
shadow copy
page file
hibernation file
boot error log
2) downlad a 30 days trial of DiskPerfect 8
3) defrag system files
4)shrink Vista
5) be happy.

Look up this very forum, you will find several posts describing the steps in more detail.

You can do that from within Vista itself.
I did it.

 

i did that a while ago but with no avail, but i think ive decided that vista can be a hog, when i actually looked at how much it was using already and how much linux was using (i had a bunch of old fedora/ubuntu isos on my linux partition that i dont need anymore, so that threw off my vision of how my hard drive was actually being used) i decided that i really dont need as much as i thought i would for linux, so i should be fine. Thanks for the help though

 

If you're advanced enough to be doing triple-boot, you probably don't want to be messing with the recovery discs at all. Those are for n00bs Check out my clean install guide (in my sig), then you can install Vista and partition however you like. Just make sure to backup first, as everything will be deleted.

 

very nice guide, i will have to use that this summer (or reading week) but right now i dont have any time, and this will be the last weekend i will have any spare time for a while and im almost done already and i dont have enough time to start over again

i do like the prospect of a clean vista install though, this XP install is very clean and im enjoying it

 

looks like ill be using your guide anyway... installing XP broke some things and i am just going to start over now

 

Something like this?
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=205999