I have a dual-boot setup with Ubuntu and Windows Vista. I need to shrink the partition that Vista is installed on. (It's an NTFS partition.) I tried using Vista's own disk manager, but it didn't work.
I heard that GParted can resize NTFS partitions - is this true? Is it a safe tool for resizing partitions? Are there any potential issues I should be aware of if I use it?
gparted is a great partitioning tool - I have used it to resize FAT, NTFS, EXT[2..4] and haven't run into any issues as of yet. However - with all disk operations there is always the possibility of failure and that should always be weighed during resizing.
Make sure you have nothing mounted to the drives you're attempting to resize, ensure that you have ample CPU and RAM to perform the operations. If you're on a Laptop make sure it's plugged in and that it won't suspend or hibernate while performing these operations. Lastly this can be time intensive - my last tip is, while gparted is running it may appear unresponsive or frozen. Just let it finish.
GParted works great for that. I used it to resize my Windows 7 partition without any problems at all. However, in order to avoid problems, you will want to uncheck the "round to cylinders" option when you resize the partition. That can cause booting problems for Windows 7 or Vista.
I can only speak from personal experience, but I have used gparted on NTFS partions several times and never encountered a problem.
Indeed - my first introduction to Linux systems was using a GParted 'image' to boot from and resize the my VMware Fusion virtual PC's hard drive. I've since used it maybe a dozen times for doing this, on different VMs, for XP and Win2k3 (both NTFS). No problems at all.
If you haven't done it before, just take your time and carefully read all the pop-up dialogs and messages before pressing 'Yes'. :-)
