Resizing NTFS partition to make room for FC10

[Craig White]

On Sat, 2009-02-28 at 16:25 -0500, Tod Thomas wrote:
> Matthew Flaschen wrote:
> > Mikkel L. Ellertson wrote:
> >   
> >> Tod Thomas wrote:
> >>     
> >>> I know this is a little off topic.  I did google around looking for the
> >>> correct forum to post this question but had little luck.  If anyone can
> >>> make an informed suggestion I'd very much appreciate it.
> >>>
> >>> I have a 150GB ATA disk, /dev/hdb, containing winxp.  I'd like to move
> >>> the contents to an spare 80GB ATA disk, /dev/hda, to make room for a
> >>> full install of FC10 on the larger disk in preparation for ultimately
> >>> getting the winxp install running under a linux based VM.
> >>>
> >>> From knoppix, I started by using ntfsresize to shrink the xp partition
> >>> down to 20GB.  That worked suprisingly fine.
> >>> I then installed the smaller drive and used dd to copy over the image of
> >>> the xp installation:  dd if=/dev/hdb of=/dev/hda bs=10000000 count=2000
> >>>       
> >
> > That was a bad idea.  You've copied the MBR of hdb to the MBR of hda.
> > That's why the hda disk "thinks" the disk is 150 GB.  What you should do
> > is zero the mbr of hda
> >
> > dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hda bs=512 count=1
> >
> > Then, use GParted (or whatever) to create a partition on hda (probably
> > hda1) of the exact same size as the old XP partition (probably hdb1)
> > You may as well partition the other 60 GB of hda at the same time.
> >
> > Then, you should be able to do:
> >
> > dd if=/dev/hdb1 of=/dev/hda1 bs=512
> >
> > to copy over the XP partition.
> >
> > As usual, you should do backups before such operations and understand
> > the risks if you do not.
> >
> > Matt Flaschen
> >
> >   
> Thanks.  I thought that recreating the partition using fdisk would have 
> accomplished the same thing - no?  If not what does the fdisk process I 
> followed
> do or not do?
----
Just an FYI...

The anaconda installer on F10 allows you to resize NTFS partitions on
the fly (as part of the installation process itself) so there really is
no need for other tool kits but as Mikkel suggested before, it's really
important to 'defrag' before you shrink an NTFS partition to minimize
the likelihood of having files lost during the shrink process.

Craig