[Nottingham] Dual booting

[J I]

SDA1 is *probably *a recovery image (or maybe even related to UEFI; not
something I've had much contact with), I'd be inclined to leave that.
SDA2 is *probably *some related HP recovery thing, I'd be inclined to leave
that as well
You could check by mounting them and having a rummage to see what's in
there.
Neither are that big really and might help you should you ever need to do
odd firmware updates or reinstall Windows.

You can certainly delete SDA4 and then expand SDA7 into the free space from
GParted. All it will take is time.
Shifting the partitions to swallow the space from SDA1 and SDA2 will take
more time and is probably the more dangerous operation).
Obviously, if you can, I would backup the entire disc before doing anything
(Clonezilla is simple and easy to use).

The SDA labels will change but that *shouldn't* matter as anything modern
will be using UUIDs.
GParted should also be able to rewrite any boot information as required.
I've stopped worrying about a separate /boot and swap on non-server systems
(anything based off Ubuntu 20.04 will be trimming kernels and using a file
for swap anyway).

Personally I prefer GParted over the text version as the diagram and
colours make it much, *much *clearer as to what is what.
It is SSD aware, so you should not need to futz with block sizes etc etc.

Did I mention backup?
Seriously, take a backup of the *entire *disc.

J.

On Mon, 2 Nov 2020 at 21:10, NIGEL Black via Nottingham <
nottingham at mailman.lug.org.uk> wrote:

> Hi Folks
>
> Although I have some experience of dual booting this is the first time
> I've considered removing the initial system in order to do so.  It raises
> the question of whether fiddling with sda1 and sda2 (see attachment) to
> make room for the new system automatically renumbers the remaining
> partitions and whether that has any operational consequences.
>
> I would like to replace the existing sda1 and sda2 with three partitions
> for the new system, swap and home; delete sda4 and resize sda7 into the
> empty space. (ie keep and expand the extended sda3).
>
> What are the pitfalls? Should any partition be left untouched?
>
> How are the virtual group meetings working out?  I look forward to 'real'
> sessions again.
>
>
> Best wishes.
>
> Nigel
> --
> Nottingham mailing list
> Nottingham at mailman.lug.org.uk
> https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/nottingham
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