Solved How to shrink Win 8.1 C drive with OEM partition in front

[awesi7]

Hi Everyone,I would like to shrink my C drive (it has the OS on it) to dual boot with another OS but I am not sure where to begin as there are other recovery partitions in front of the C partition. Disk Management and Disk Part showed me less partitions than G-parted did. I've attached screen shots.Would it be safe to shrink it anyway?Please see my computer specs. If more info is needed, please ask. Thanks for any help / suggestions.

 

[samuria]

Welcome to the forum The photo is too small for me to read it if you could post a bigger one

 

[awesi7]

Welcome to the forum The photo is too small for me to read it if you could post a bigger one

Sorry. I hope these are better. I repost them in the original post.

 

[samuria]

You can shrink to the left no problem what other o/s are you going to use if it's older you may then have fun duel booting you install the oldest one first. You can use free virtual box and run any o/s as virtual PC and don't have to touch partitions

 

[awesi7]

Thanks samurai. I was thinking of dual booting with a Linux distro. I didn't think of using a VM which may be another option if the partition thing doesn't go as planned.

Appreciate you help very much.

 

[mysery126]

the recovery partition will not be a problem, as you can only shrink a partition from the right.

 

[awesi7]

the recovery partition will not be a problem, as you can only shrink a partition from the right.

Thanks mysery126.
A question I meant to ask at the outset. In that case, can I then delete the OEM recovery partition? I created a bootable disk (usb) and imaged all the partitions with Macrium Reflect a few days ago.

 

[mysery126]

The OEM recovery partition is for restoring your computer to factory default settings when in serious problem. Since you have created a backup including all partitions, I think you can delete the OEM partition.

 

[awesi7]

The OEM recovery partition is for restoring your computer to factory default settings when in serious problem. Since you have created a backup including all partitions, I think you can delete the OEM partition.

Sounds good.
samurai, mysery126, thanks for the time you took to help me out here.