[ale] Linux Kubuntu install

[Robert Reese]

Hi Brian,

*********** REPLY SEPARATOR  ***********
On 2/12/2007 at 5:54 PM Brian Pitts wrote:

>If this is the explanation, then you found a bug in ntfsresize.
>
>"Defragmentation is NOT required prior to resizing because the program 
>can relocate any data if needed, without risking data integrity."
>
>http://man.linux-ntfs.org/ntfsresize.8.html

It might, but then it might not.  I'm not familiar at what point Ubuntu uses ntfsresize, or if there are other factors at play.  My assumption is that the install was done from the Live CD, presumably initiated during a Windows session rather than from booting from the CD.  Paul's original email said he started the PC with a CD in the drive, so I very well could be wrong about how the install was started.

Unfortunately, his original email also said that the laptop had two harddrives in it, one of them was a 200G harddrive that had multiple partitions on it.  That's a rather unusual setup for ntfsresize to encounter.  Furthermore, how was XP handling the partitions?  There's a few different ways XP will allow you to use partitions, and in this case young Mr. Cartwright may very well had used Dynamic disks. Depending on how he set his partitions up, it is possible that Windows may have decided to put system files in otherwise unexpected disk areas.

Dealing with Windows partitions is *always* a risky endeavor no matter was solution or product is used.  Thankfully technology has gotten better over the years to deal with Microsoft's idiotic file systems; you'd have thought a decade ago that the DOS and Windows could easily have never required defragging simply by putting files in the first space available that was able to fit the entire file, and during idle times compact the files.  Oh well.

By the way, does it strike you odd that a non-Microsoft product handles Microsoft-centric tasks better than the Microsoft tools do?

Cheers,
Robert Reese~

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   * Microsoft is NOT a standard. *
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