I want to resize my Windows partition and create another, smaller partition. I know there are many partitioning programs out there, but I've never used any of them out of fear of corrupting data. I know hard drive corruption was a serious concern with 3rd party partitioning tools in the past, but is it still a problem? What is the risk of losing everything by resizing my NTFS partition? Any suggestions for free tools that are safer than others?
hard drive partition resizing question
- Thread starter farmkid
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Which OS? In Vista, can't you shrink volumes and create new partitions and volumes by running Microsoft's Computer > Manage > Storage > Disk Management? I used it to divide my C: volume into a smaller C: volume and a User Data volume. I can't speak for Windows 7 but I assume it has the same capability.
It's a dual boot system with Windows XP and Fedora 11. I want to resize the NTFS partition to make a small partition I can format with FAT32 to share data between the two OS's. I can read the NTFS partition from Linux, but I've heard that writing to NTFS from linux can, on occasion, corrupt the partition. Therefore, I want a small (maybe 1GB or so) partition I can safely access from both OS's.
I think you'll need to use a 3rd party tool for XP such as 7tools -- worked for me -- costs $30 though. Alternatively, could you use a flash drive/memory stick to share data? Another solution would be to run Linux in a virtual machine.
I've been using a flash drive so far, but it's somewhat cumbersome. Because of what I'm using it for, I can't use a virtual machine. I'm using Linux to run a data analysis program that requires all the RAM you can give it. I've got my laptop maxed out at 4GB, and I need all of it in Linux. I'm running a second copy of Windows in VirtualBox within Linux to run 1 Windows program I need when I'm also using that other data analysis program, but I don't want to make that my primary Windows installation. What want is to be able to have that one partition I can also make my shared folder with that VirtualBox copy of Windows so that I can put access it from both copies of Windows and from Linux.
I know I'll need a 3rd party tool, but the last time I looked into them (it's been a few years), there were concerns with them causing data corruption. I don't want to resize one partition and end up hosing the whole thing and have to start all over reinstalling Windows and Linux. Have the tools gotten good enough that partition corruption isn't really a problem anymore?
I know I'll need a 3rd party tool, but the last time I looked into them (it's been a few years), there were concerns with them causing data corruption. I don't want to resize one partition and end up hosing the whole thing and have to start all over reinstalling Windows and Linux. Have the tools gotten good enough that partition corruption isn't really a problem anymore?
I didn't have any problem with Windows Vista or 7tools on XP but then the drives weren't more than 25% full. I also defragged the file systems and backed them up before resizing. Your mileage may vary. I'd wait a bit and see what others have to say.
As you know from experieince it's a dicey issue. I've used programs like partition magic the past but it's always scared the bejesus out of me worrying somthing is going to go wrong.
I think that Disk Director Suite from Acronis can do it and there maybe a 15 day trial edition that you can download to do the trick. I wouldn't trust any freeware ones and often the trial versions will simulate it can be done but not actually complete the process.
Windows does actually have the ability to change partition sizes built in. You need to go into the Disk Manager (Administrator Tools -> system manager and convert the disk from Basic to Dynamic (which also allows you do software RAID under Windows 0) but won't allow you to shrink the drive or manipulate the size of the Windows system drive.
Is adding a second hard disk to the system an option? It would be a lot safer and less stressful. And lets face it - given hard disk prices these days it can be a lot cheaper than buying programs to adjust partion sizes.
So the newer tools still aren't fool-proof, eh?
Unfortunately, adding a second drive isn't an option. This is on my laptop, so I'm stuck with just the one drive. This issue is really one of convenience. It would be nice to have this shared partition, but it isn't necessary. I wish I had thought of it back when I was installing the operating systems and had set it up that way initially.
Unfortunately, adding a second drive isn't an option. This is on my laptop, so I'm stuck with just the one drive. This issue is really one of convenience. It would be nice to have this shared partition, but it isn't necessary. I wish I had thought of it back when I was installing the operating systems and had set it up that way initially.
When you set the computer up, is there still a partition that came with the manufacturer supplied installation software? (system recovery partiton)?
If you have created the recovery discs, nuke the file system on the recovery partition and format it as Fat32.
Though just re-reading the thread I think that for the size partition you want I'd just by a thumb drive.
ALWAYS backup your data. ALWAYS.
You can use the free Clonezilla to create a bit-for-bit copy of your drive.
If you just want to backup your data, just plug in a USB drive and drag it over.
With external drives being SO cheap these days, there's no excuse not to take a little bit of time and back everything up....
You can use the free Clonezilla to create a bit-for-bit copy of your drive.
If you just want to backup your data, just plug in a USB drive and drag it over.
With external drives being SO cheap these days, there's no excuse not to take a little bit of time and back everything up....
I doubt it. I've been running Fedora alongside various versions of Windows for years, and always have at least one NTFS partition mounted r/w in both operating systems. So far, I have never corrupted an NTFS partition or filesystem from Linux. NTFS-3G is very stable, it's included in practically every distribution, and Fedora has conveniently linked it to mount.ntfs. Use it without fear.
I've never corrupted an ext3 filesystem from Windows, either, not even my LUKS partition, not even through multiple Windows crashes. But I rarely mount ext3 r/w from Windows, so there's not much of an opportunity for disk scribbling there.
Edit:
If you still want a new partition, use ntfsresize to shrink the filesystem, then use s/c/fdisk or parted to change the partition size. You have lots of choices, read the man pages and play with them to see which tool you like best. After shrinking the partition that holds your shrunken NTFS filesystem, create a new partition out of the missing space. Use mkfs.vfat to put a filesystem on your new partition, or reboot and let Windows do the formatting, and you're done.
Before you change your partition, you should save the partition table somewhere safe. Assuming your hard drive is sda, dd if=/dev/sda of=partiontable.sda bs=512 count=1 should do the trick. To restore the partition table, do dd if=partitiontable.sda of=/dev/sda bs=512 count=1. That should work with good old DOS-style partition tables, I have no idea if it works with whatever fancy new disk-labeling schemes they've cooked up recently.
Really, it's easier just to trust NTFS-3G to play nice than it is to go poking around your partition table, IMHO.
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