Exam question - Shrink the primary partion in windows XP?

testbuster

I am doing a practical test, and this quesiton, and it confused me.

A computer that runs Windows XP has one basic disk containing a single partition. the partition has 30GB of free space and the hard disk has 5 GB of unallocated space. you need to install windows 7 in a dual-boot configuration. Windows 7 must not be installed in a Virtual Hard Disk (VHD)

What should you do first?
A. extend the primary partion.
B. compress the hard drive
C. Shrink the primary partition
D. Share the hard drive.

the correct answer is C.
But since Windows XP can't use Shrink the volume, i think this answer is wrong. Any other thoughts?

Thanks, guys.

sratakhin

You can shrink the Windows XP partition when you run the installer for Windows 7.

testbuster

thanks, Sratakhin, my colleague who passed 70-680 also said so.

i guess windows 7 installer defrags the partition and then resizes.

sratakhin

I don't think it does. The amount of free space available for you to shrink depends on how badly the drive is fragmented. So, do the defrag first or just use a third-party utility to resize the primary partition.

KenC

I actually thought partition sizes on basic disks are locked (in terms of size) when you create them.

ptilsen

The disk shrink is actually accomplished as part of defrag.exe. It will defrag the drive as needed, then shrink it. It can do this from the WinPE environment consistently since it is running on removable media, rather than the OS. It doesn't matter whether the source disk is basic or dynamic.