does or can adding partitions affect windows recovery?

Question

Does shrinking the C:\ partition in Windows 10 to make room for a Linux partition affect the ability of the Windows Recovery partition(s) (One for Windows PE, one for recovery) to find and work with the C partition?

Answer 1

I've resized my C: partition multiple times over the years as I switched between smaller or bigger hard drives.

I don't see any reason to think it would affect such things, as long as you really DO mean the C:\ partition, where Windows is installed, where you have the normal install path as C:\Windows, AND you are shrinking from the END of the partition. After all, Windows and whatever else it wanted to set itself up with should always be the FIRST things on a drive. Any OS's you want to add go AFTER Windows. But BEFORE you shrink, if it's a hard disk drive (spinny thingy with RPMs, you know), defragment first. Defragmenting organizes all data toward the beginning of the drive, keeping the end as truly free and clean as possible, allowing you a safe shrink.

The key is to not touch or resize the other important partitions. Don't touch the reserve partitions, the recovery partitions, MBR or the EFI partitions if you're on a UEFI system, etc.

I reiterate in different words, if you're resizing the C: partition, don't touch the BEGINNING of the partition - that's what will make Windows confused. Touching the beginning of a partition (resizing, moving, etc.) is the riskiest. You should have things planned so you never move partitions - if you do, be prepared to delete and recreate if necessary.

1. BACK UP your data; messing with partitions always has the risk of messing up the partition table and thus "losing" data.
2. Defragment if it's a disk drive.
3. Choose a generous, comfortable size for Windows and your programs (research this / estimate well)
4. Use the Linux installer or Gparted on a LiveCD to shrink the Windows partition by ONLY adjusting THE END of it.
5. Touch no other partitions and create all your new space in the new space created after the Windows partition - probably an ext4 parition and...
6. Don't forget your Linux distro probably wants a partition for swap space. Make this the absolute final partition that goes to the end of the drive. It's usually created to be the size of your RAM, though you should research this if you have more than 8GB RAM because it may be overkill.

DISCLAIMER: There are exceptions to many of these and they are not hard rules for anyone who really knows what they're doing, so if you have to ask this question, you might as well take them as hard rules.

PS: Remember installing Linux usually involves using a bootloader like Grub2. Be prepared to face boot issues if anything goes wrong.