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I am moving from Windows 11 to Linux Mint (LM) -- I am already using LM as my daily driver -- and would like to rearrange my drives so that LM benefits from my fast NVMe drive. The NVMe currently has Windows 11 and is the boot drive for that OS. Currently, LM is installed on a separate SSD.

My desire would be to shrink the Windows partition on the NVMe, move it to the back of the drive leaving unallocated space in front of it. Then move the contents of the LM partition over to the unallocated space on the NVMe. I suspect the safest thing would be to actually install LM into a new partition on that unallocated space and then rsync the contents from the old drive to that new partition?

I need to keep Windows around (as I provide support for folks in my area and still have some Windows apps I need to use) and my biggest concern is whether Windows will puke if I shrink and move that partition. That used to be a non-issue in the old days but things seem more complicated now with EFI boot partitions.

I found this article Move Windows 10 partition to another location on the same drive and avoid boot problems but it seems a little different than what I'm trying to do.

AdvApp
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Shrinking the Windows partition works as well with UEFI computers as it did before.

Note that the shrinking should only be done from inside Windows and by using Disk Management. If it doesn't allow you to shrink the partition as much as you like, do not force it, as this may harm Windows to the point that it can't boot.

If you need to move the Windows partition (why?), do it with a bootable third-party product such as AOMEI Partition Assistant Standard or another.

As a precaution, you should take an image backup of the disk and have a boot media for the backup software, to be able to restore the disk in case it becomes unbootable.

harrymc
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