Resize NTFS partition with Gparted

[oliverjames]

In need of a little reassurance, I am in the process of revitalizing an old IBM Thinkpad and a Compaq desktop belonging to friend. I intend to install Mint on both - I also plan to load Mint onto the computer in our community music school. I'm planning to start by setting these up as dual boot machines Mint/WinXP. All the machines have NTFS partitions.

The first operation was to restore some sanity to the partitioning of the desktop for which a bigger WinXP partition was needed on one of the disks. So I flung in the Live Elyssa XFCE CDRom and used Gparted to stretch the existing partition.

The operation was not entirely successful, an error message was returned - something along the lines of "failure when trying to resize the NTFS". Interestingly WinXP still boots but, notwithstanding that the Win disk management tool shows the newly resized partition, the OS still sees the old file size characteristics.

A scan of the Internet reveals that I am not the only person to have had this problem - when will I learn to read the manual first .

So I'm seeking some reassuring guidance on how to: reset the NTFS partition size data after enlarging it, how to shrink NTFS partitions without the same problem arising.
My previous installations of Linux have always been onto FAT32 disks and these have not given any problems.

Oliverjames.

[DataMan]

Here's the way I have done re-size on NTFS partitions holding Windows operating system using GParted Live.

1. De-frag, de-frag and then de-frag some more .
2. Launch GParted Live and shrink your NTFS to the desired size.
3. Boot to Windows and let it get happy with the new size (this from another poster on another thread).
4. Back to GParted Live. Finish your partition editing as required. Cautionary note : Do one operation at a time in GParted Live. I recommend NOT treeing multiple operations at once.

The usual recommendations apply : backup all critical data BEFORE messing with parititons.

DataMan

[oliverjames]

Thanks Dataman,

Given current state of affairs (NTFS partition grown from 5 to 19 Gb, WinXP not seeing new size) do you suggest defragX3, then GParted live to slightly shrink partition?

Edit.
Still no luck with this but I have since resized two other NTFS partitions without problem. I suspect the solution to this one, given that I can't even get the machine to see an external HD is to remove the problem disk, stick it in an external box and work on it from there.

I've resolved the problem provisionally by finding space to install Puppy. Thus functionality of the box is fully restored. Bravo Linux.

Oliverjames