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I am here because I need a little advice to create and install a 3rd OS on my laptop. Let me quickly epxplain, I have windows for my 3d work(maya) and gaming , then I started to move my cpp programming and opengl on ubuntu 12.04. In order to make nvidia prime technology to work I needed to use backports and doing this way multiple screen is not supported, but I got everything else to work properly (compiling , opengl etc). Now I wish to update to ubuntu 14.04 where I can use all my screens (total of 3) with nvidia-prime. I dont want to update dircectly the ubuntu 12.04 partition because it s a safeplace where everything works so I want to make a 3rd partition to do my tests with ubuntu 14.04. Now I tried that on my spare laptop and everytime I was resizing the partitions and make a new one (from windows) the grub was broken and I had to start from live cd and use boot repair. Now my questions are: What s the best way to do this? If i resize the partition from ubuntu is grub gonna be broken ? (I wish not to try too much my luck doing over and over the repair)

PS : I actually have two hard drive C: full windows install D: (data drive) , 80% data 20% ubuntu 12.04.

Thanks in advance

Cheers

M.

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Assuming you're resizing the Ubuntu partition, do it by booting into a Ubuntu USB/CD drive's live mode. If you use GParted to resize, GRUB should still boot fine. Windows is generally unaware of GRUB and Linux, so it may accidentally overwrite necessary data. It's safer to do it from Linux.

GParted is capable of handling NTFS partitions as well. There's a tradeoff here: GParted can resize to as much free space is available, but it will move around data (like defragmentation) to make room, and may take a long time. Windows can do it quicker, but it may not be able to get all the space (only after the last used sector).

In your case, I'd recommend Windows for resizing only the Windows partition, and Linux for resizing the rest. BTW, 100 GB is a bit overboard for Linux root, I think. 30 should plenty. Keep your data on another partition in case you have to format.

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  • Thank you for your prompt answer! What about if I want to resize the window partition? that s the big one 900GB ubuntu one is only 100GB
    – giordi
    Jun 16, 2014 at 18:51
  • @giordi, I updated the answer. My reply was a bit too big for a comment.
    – muru
    Jun 16, 2014 at 19:00
  • @giordi, also, don't accept the answer until it answers your question to your satisfaction. People may overlook questions which have an accepted answer and you may miss out on more knowledgeable answers.
    – muru
    Jun 16, 2014 at 19:02
  • thank you for the answer and for the explanation on accepting the answers. I ll do as you say. Cheers M.
    – giordi
    Jun 16, 2014 at 19:04

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