Partition Editing and a Live USB Boot

September 9th, 2009 by templewulf

Preface

As a professional who produces technology for others, there are plenty of mistakes I would be embarrassed to relate. However, the travails of trying to create a bootable USB drive that can run GPartEd were a learning experience that might help you avoid the pitfalls I stumbled into.

Before we begin, I should say that when I started using Linux years ago, I got into the habit of using one drive for OS and one for files. I carried that habit with me into my Windows use, and it has served me well. I can completely nuke the OS partition without any worry of reformatting all my precious, precious documents.

In the move to Vista, I bought a new 500 GB hard drive. Thinking 500 gigs of space was plenty, I split it into two partitions on the same drive. 50 gigs for Vista, the rest for my files. Since I like to run a tight ship, my XP use hardly ever grew above 40 GB, but Vista swelled to the limit much sooner than I expected. Given that I had a good 200GB free left on the drive, I decided to reappropriate some of that space for the slavering maw of the one called Ever-Devouring. Ia, Ia, Vista Fhtagn!

Dead Vista Lies Dreaming

How I managed to create a Live USB thumbdrive with GPartEd using only Vista

Navigate to the GPartEd website; specifically the Live USB Boot page. Notice that the instructions are wholly inadequate, then listen to me instead.
Download the latest stable GPartEd iso file from their SourceForge page.
Download Unetbootin. It does not need to be installed and can be run from your desktop. I used version unetbootin-windows-357.exe.
Install the iso file to the USB stick through Unetbootin
- Plug in your USB thumb drive. You need at least 110 MB of free space, and for compatibility purposes it should be formatted as FAT32. If you don’t know how to format a drive, read up on it first. It can be very dangerous.
- Start Unetbootin
- Click the “Diskimage” radio button, and ensure that the drop down box is set to “ISO”.
- Click the ellipsis button and browse for the GPartEd ISO file we downloaded earlier.
- If you plugged in your USB drive before starting, “USB Drive” should default into “Type” and the letter of your USB Drive should default into “Drive”.
- Click OK. When Unetbootin finishes installing, click “Reboot”.
When your PC restarts, enter your BIOS setup screen. The method to doing this varies by motherboard manufacturer, but pressing the <delete> key during bootup is the most common method.
Set your motherboard to boot from your USB drive first. If you do not see the USB drive under bootable devices, you may need to find and edit the booting drive from a hard drive management screen in your BIOS settings. Again, this can vary based on manufacturer.
Boot from USB and resize your partitions using GPartEd. In my case, I have Windows on C and my files on D, so I shrank the rightmost partition on the drive and moved it right to the end of the drive. I then grew the leftmost partition to fill up the remaining space. Once you have configured your partitions, be sure to click the “Apply” checkmark in order to make these changes permanently.

And that’s it! I have made my sacrifice to Dread Lord Vista on the bronze altar of GPartEd, cementing this as the most ironic solution I’ve ever come up with to a tech problem.

Some of you maybe asking why I didn’t just burn a Live CD with GPartEd and be done with it. Well, remember how I started out saying I have some embarrassing stories as a technical professional experiencing my own technical problems? My optical drive went out months ago, and I haven’t bothered to spend the money on a new one! Apparently there are downsides to being a gnarled miser at 25, clutching white-knuckled at meager dollar bills as my PC falls ashambles.

Atomic Buster!