Resizing NTFS partition to make room for FC10

[Matthew Flaschen]

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