ntfsresize error 16

[rivers49]

error(16) error opening partition device: Device or resource busy. Already open by another software
Disk is SATA 250, 2 NTFS partitions, one 30g and one 220g. want to downsize 220 and increase the 30. XP OS boot partition is on the 30.

Anyone have an idea how to proceed. The force command doesn't do it.

[Harry Kuhman]

I strongly caution against resizing or modifying NTFS partitions in Knoppix. The commercial Partition MAgic program can do it, but even it suggests that you should have a good backup of your data before trying to do so. So I would suggest making such a backup and, if you don't have Partition Magic (I'm guessing you don't or you would not have asked this), just deleting the partitions and recreating them fresh at the sizes you want.

[rivers49]

Appreciate the reply. I have a full backups of system and data. This is an exercise in training. I'd like to use a free utility to repartition drives rather than purchasing. I've used Partition Magic in the past and it works well but my goal is to be able to boot into a linux sh from a cd or usb drive and manually modify the partitions.

[Irgu]

As the errors says the partition is already in use thus it would be unsafe to resize it. Ntfsresize has quite a lot sanity checks to prevent data loss. Simply unmount the partition then it will work.

BTW, there isn't any reason not to trust ntfsresize, it's in heavy use for four years by most distros and it's much more reliable than Partition Magic. However some ntfsresize front-end, namely the ones which use Parted (Qtparted, Gparted) may modify the partition table (not the ntfs and your data) in a way very rarely which makes windows unbootable. This can be easily fixed by setting disk access in the BIOS to LBA. On the other hand, Partition Magic is able to mess up real data in a really unfxcable way. And the partition table too.

[michapma]

Further well-written ntfsresize info:
http://mlf.linux.rulez.org/mlf/ezaz/ntfsresize.html