Using qtparted to resize a NTFS partition

Last weekend I helped out at an installfest, and as expected, people came with only one NTFS partition with XP on it.

I had never used qtparted before, and was not sure it would work considering the "can't write to NTFS" linux issue.

But I gave it a go on 2 machines, the first worked perfectly, and the second gave an error before starting becasue the disk wasn't defragged.

Now I'd still back up the hard disk before doing this, but it is nice to know that it works.

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Originally Posted by eadz

I had never used qtparted before,

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I really like qtparted :)

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Originally Posted by eadz

and was not sure it would work considering the "can't write to NTFS" linux issue.

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There are some confusions on NTFS support. I've read some clarification on http://mlf.linux.rulez.org/mlf/ezaz/...ize.html#write

As you can see, Knoppix has the lower quality driver. I hope developers will upgrade it. cloop'ing from an NTFS partition, as TopologiLinux does, would be very useful!

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Originally Posted by eadz

But I gave it a go on 2 machines, the first worked perfectly, and the second gave an error before starting becasue the disk wasn't defragged.

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There are rumours, the new ntfs resizer will have built-in defragmentation.

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Originally Posted by eadz

Now I'd still back up the hard disk before doing this, but it is nice to know that it works.

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If the data is valuable then back up is always a good idea. I "lost" data because of disk faults, stolen computer, software bugs and user error.

Well , to add to this discussion:

I've done 9 NTFS resizes on 4 totally different systems, with no difficulties... Only I needed to thoroughly defrag the drives.... Not many defraggers leave the end space clean; actually, I've only found one, O&O Defrag(www.oo-software.com) that does so with NTFS...

I took a look at o&o software, it costs 45 $.
Bootit-ng costs 35, does resize NTFS and amongst others EXT3 and Reiserfs, backs up partitons to cd and appears to be a capable bootloader (didn't check te last item). It fits on a single floppy and has a graphical user interface.
What good is a powerfull QTparted if you need a commercial defragger first?

Whether M$ locks its NTFS partitions on purpose or not, I don't know but free resizers are not as good as the commercial ones yet because there is no free info available on the NTFS format. This does not stop development but surely slows it down considerably until the next NNTFS (Newer NTFS) comes along.

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Originally Posted by jdong

Well , to add to this discussion:

I've done 9 NTFS resizes on 4 totally different systems, with no difficulties... Only I needed to thoroughly defrag the drives.... Not many defraggers leave the end space clean; actually, I've only found one, O&O Defrag(www.oo-software.com) that does so with NTFS...

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Then boot to safemode in windows and force a chkdsk on next reboot. That should clean up any problems left behind.

I have the problem what i cant get more than 5.5 gb out of my ntfs partition.
There are alway some fragments at the end of the partition. I already tried o&o defrag but that didn't help.

@cascadefx
What does chkdisk do that could solve my problem?

hi, you may want to check here; Facteur came up with some stuff and there may be some useful links for you. I still haven't got the faintest idea what I did to make it work for me, sorry!
Best of luck,
FlorianK.

I had this problem. I solved it by partioning it, defragging, re-partioning, degragging and so on, until it squeezed things down enough. Apparently Windows ntfs likes to have some stuff at the end, but not too close...

it seems like there are some system and paging files at the end.
There is also the windows "swap partition". So must deactivate it because the defrag tools dont touch at them.

HMMM...
Just tried a read-only test run with ntfsresize and told me i could free another 5 gb of my partition. Why didn't qtparted tell me?