9fans archive / 1995 / 04 / 77 /    prev next

From: serge@eul... serge@eul...
Subject: fips: shrink a DOS partition
Date: Tue, 11 Apr 1995 03:09:22 -0400

(I'm sure everyone knows about this, but I couldn't find a little old
lady to help across the street, so ... :-)

Take a look at ftp://sunsite.unc.edu/pub/Linux/system/Install/fips12.zip.
It contains a program to shrink a DOS partition, without having to back
it up first (or reformat the disk or restore the data afterwards).  You
do need to move all the file system blocks to the beginning first, but
that's easily done with DOS 6.x (x >= 0) defrag or Norton utilities, etc.

This should let you install another OS that requires its own partition
(oh, say Plan9 :-) on your DOS disk much easier/faster.  Perhaps the
Plan9 folks might want to include a pointer to this in their
(installation) docs and/or distribute it (it's under GPL)?