Hi John You would be doing the change to extended for one of the partitions using fdisk or similar? Yes, risky, but the risk is all in your fingers. Can you practice on some other surplus PC? About the backup to removeable disk: I would prefer to use dd for this, just because I know it better. One option which might be less risky: install Ubuntu, and let it do the partition changes. It knows how to shrink the windows filesystem and set up the partitions. Then install Mint on the Ubuntu partition. Maybe you can go directly to Mint. It has been a while since I have monkeyed with partitions, so I hope I said this all correctly. Cheers --Rick On February 19, 2018 10:51:30 AM EST, J C Nash <profjcnash [ at ] gmail [ dot ] com> wrote: >Background (skip to QUERY if you wish): > >While in Florida recently, my wife and I spotted a nice 11.6" Dell >Inspiron >for $300 US. The design is "old", with 500GB spinning disk, 4 GB Ram, >quad >core processor that isn't terribly powerful. However, it is a size Mary >likes >for travel, and enough disk for lots of family photos and videos. (Her >previous >Asus EEE 1225B was similar, but heavier, and suffered an unfortunate >collision >with a tile floor that has made it only partly functional.) We've tried >Android >tablet, but the key layout on Android -- and we've looked around at >several -- >makes doing email and stuff awkward. And they don't store much. > >It has Windows 10 and works reasonably well with this. We'd like to >keep >the Win10 in dual boot. Sometimes useful to test things. > >For safety, using the Windows 10 recovery disk tool >(Control Panel / System & Security > Security & Maintenance > Recovery) >created a recovery USB on a 16 GB Lexar flash key. > >Also downloaded Clonezilla clonezilla-live-20170905-zesty-amd64.iso and >used mintstick tool >to install on a USB key (only uses about 275 MB). This is in the >alternate >repository for Clonezilla and allows UEFI booting. The regular "stable" >choice did not >boot. > >Made a whole disk image using this and put it on an external USB drive >from the Dell. > > >QUERY: > >The partition structure is as follows: > >Disk /dev/sda: 465.8 GiB, 500107862016 bytes, 976773168 sectors >Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes >Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 4096 bytes >I/O size (minimum/optimal): 4096 bytes / 4096 bytes >Disklabel type: gpt >Disk identifier: 3BBC8E19-46F4-4AB6-B9DA-7B3B4AB0A0DF > >Device Start End Sectors Size Type >/dev/sda1 2048 1026047 1024000 500M EFI System >/dev/sda2 1026048 1288191 262144 128M Microsoft reserved >/dev/sda3 1288192 975849471 974561280 464.7G Microsoft basic data >/dev/sda4 975849472 976771071 921600 450M Windows recovery >environment > >Unless I'm really mis-reading this, I've got 4 primary partitions, so >need to >convert one to Extended/Logical. Some forum comments say this can be >risky. >Does anyone have recommendations or experience? > >- Some net comments suggest using Windows tool to do this. It appears >that the >MiniTool Partition Wizard (https://www.partitionwizard.com) can do >this. > >- In linux there appears to be fixparts from >https://sourceforge.net/projects/gptfdisk/files/gptfdisk/1.0.1/fixparts-binaries/ > >Other choices? > >My current plan is > >- to convert the 465G particion with the free version of Partition >Wizard >- test Win10 boots >- use partimg from liveUSB to image that converted partition >- shrink the Win10 partition >- test booting again >- use partimg again to save (replace previous save) >- install Linux (Mint 18.3 Sylvia is what Mary is used to) to the >freed-up space. > >Comments and suggestions welcome. > >Best, JN >_______________________________________________ >Linux mailing list >Linux [ at ] lists [ dot ] oclug [ dot ] on [ dot ] ca >http://oclug.on.ca/mailman/listinfo/linux -- Sorry for being brief. Alternate email is rickleir at yahoo dot com