List,
I want to create a partition on my laptop by freeing up space from my C: drive, NTFS. I have been reading documentation on Gparted, but I could not determine if it requires contiguous free space within a partition to shrink it and create a new one with free space.
The defragmentation utility provided with Windows XP does not consolidate free space. Would using Gparted to repartition the disc, after such (suboptimal) defragmentation, result into loss of data, or will it use only the free space? It would seem visually that Gparted will use free space, but there are conflicting opinions everywhere.
Can somebody provide a concise, unequivocal answer? Can somebody provide a feasible solution if there is a definite problem?
On Jan 17, 2008 1:26 PM, Nishit Dave stargazer.dave@gmail.com wrote:
Can somebody provide a concise, unequivocal answer? Can somebody provide a feasible solution if there is a definite problem?
Based on what we tried here on approx. 20 PC's. We had used gparted to resize NTFS, FAT32 and ext3 partitions. No defragmentation or anything was done on WIndows as it's rarely used. There were no major problem, at the most couple of WIndows installs complained of missing ntldr, which was fixed easily. It may not work out the same way for you, but just decide to provide input from what I've seen.
On Jan 17, 2008 2:56 AM, Nishit Dave stargazer.dave@gmail.com wrote:
List,
I want to create a partition on my laptop by freeing up space from my C: drive, NTFS. I have been reading documentation on Gparted, but I could not determine if it requires contiguous free space within a partition to shrink it and create a new one with free space.
Essentially windows is a wimp when it comes to losing space. It bawls aloud and will play dead if some "data" files happen to be on the space which was taken away.
Its always a good idea to defrag the partitions you are resizing.
The defragmentation utility provided with Windows XP does not consolidate free space. Would using Gparted to repartition the disc, after such (suboptimal) defragmentation, result into loss of data, or will it use only the free space? It would seem visually that Gparted will use free space, but there are conflicting opinions everywhere.
The windows defrag won't consolidate the free space but consolidates the used space and with its own idea of how a file might grow. The rest is left to grabs.
I would say if you had an option, try using windows within qemu / virtualbox.
regards, C
I know, but my question is as follows:
it is a given that windows will not consolidate free space. Now, does Gparted magically work around this limitation when shrinking the NTFS partition without affecting the used portion? When you see its interface, you get a bar for the partition showing used and unused portions with different colours. Apparently, I can resize the partition by resizing the bar to take lesser unused space. Will doing this only affect the unused space, which according to NTFS is non-contiguous? It seems a bit counter-intuitive to me.
On Jan 17, 2008 10:38 AM, Nishit Dave stargazer.dave@gmail.com wrote:
I know, but my question is as follows:
it is a given that windows will not consolidate free space. Now, does Gparted magically work around this limitation when shrinking the NTFS partition without affecting the used portion? When you see its interface, you get a bar for the partition showing used and unused portions with different colours. Apparently, I can resize the partition by resizing the bar to take lesser unused space. Will doing this only affect the unused space, which according to NTFS is non-contiguous? It seems a bit counter-intuitive to me.
I have to claim incomplete information here. However the process does involve re-indexing the tables. I don't know if the truncation of files is smart at all.
I have encountered a situation were the underlying ntfs tools crapped on me saying that the partition would need a check / defrag via windows.
Since then I've used windows to check their own problems and fix them too before resizing the parts.
regards, C
No further ideas from anybody here?
On 1/17/08, Chetan S cshring@gmail.com wrote:
On Jan 17, 2008 10:38 AM, Nishit Dave stargazer.dave@gmail.com wrote:
I know, but my question is as follows:
it is a given that windows will not consolidate free space. Now, does Gparted magically work around this limitation when shrinking the NTFS partition without affecting the used portion? When you see its interface, you get a bar for the partition showing used and unused portions with different colours. Apparently, I can resize the partition by resizing the bar to take lesser unused space. Will doing this only affect the unused space, which according to NTFS is non-contiguous? It seems a bit counter-intuitive to me.
I have to claim incomplete information here. However the process does involve re-indexing the tables. I don't know if the truncation of files is smart at all.
I have encountered a situation were the underlying ntfs tools crapped on me saying that the partition would need a check / defrag via windows.
Since then I've used windows to check their own problems and fix them too before resizing the parts.
regards, C -- http://mm.glug-bom.org/mailman/listinfo/linuxers
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Chetan S -
Mehul Ved -
Nishit Dave