“I was recently assigned the task of converting a system running
Windows XP to dual-boot Windows and Linux. The user needed to run
Windows most of the time, but occasionally needed to boot Linux to
run special applications. The one overriding requirement was to
change the existing Windows setup as little as possible. In this
case, that meant adding a second hard drive. Easy enough, right?
Well, not so fast.“The computer in question was a standard white-box PC with
Windows XP installed on its one hard drive. One option was to
shrink the exiting Windows partition with NTFSresize and install
Linux in the resulting free space. However, this was too
intrusive…”