Re: QTparted misreporting partition usage

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Date: Sun, 26 Jun 2005 23:55:30 -0400

perseus wrote:

> Hi,
>
> I'm planning to install FC4 on my laptop (dell i6000) as a dual boot
> with the currently installed windows XP. However, when I come to
> partition the drive using QTparted via Knoppix CD, QTparted misreports
> the usage of the Windows partition(NTFS) saying that ~30Gb of ~33Gb are
> used, when running du shows that only 9Gb are used. I tried
> defragmenting the disk, but this made no difference. Has anyone else
> come across this problem before?
>
> Thanks
>
> perseus

I've run into the same problem of QTParted telling me that
my WinXP ntfs partition cannot be shrunk (or not much) when
other disk utilities tell me that the partition is less than
half full. If I remember correctly I found out at the time
(two years ago) that WinXP places some files way out at the
end of the partition that cannot be moved, perhaps for the
perverse reason that WinXP doesn't want to give up any disk
real estate to any other OS.

My way out at the time was to get myself a second hard disk
reserved for Linux rather than trying to resize the first
drive. WinXP gives you a graphical display of the state of
fragmentation of your Windows partition. Take a look at
that and see if there are any files way out to the right,
toward the upper end of the partition. Too bad you didn't
do this before you defragmented. If you do see some files
out there you may want to run another disk defragmentation.
  If they are still there after that run, then WinXP may
indeed refuse to move them. Perhaps a non-Microsoft
defragmentation utility (e.g. Norton?) would do a better job.

I've generally had fairly good luck with QTParted; I've
repartitioned my second hard disk a dozen times with it. I
generally prefer to use QTParted on the "System Rescue
CD-x86" rather than QTParted on the Knoppix live CD because
with Knoppix it's possible that the partition you want to
modify is mounted or "busy" rather than "available" and that
doesn't seem to happen with the System Rescue CD. You
shouldn't touch a busy partition.

The Anaconda installer for FC4 is quite good in its disk
partitioning capabilities and so are the installers for
MCNLive_Brugge (a Mandriva live CD) and Xandros 3.0.1 OCE
(which is also free). You may just want to download and
burn these CD's and poke around with these tools on your HD
to see what they say about the Windows partition and whether
it can be shrunk, and then start an install with any/or all
of these up to the point where changes would be written to
the partition table - and then bail out before that point if
you have the least degree of uncertainty about what is going
to happen. They all allow you to first simulate the disk
partitioning and they will clearly alert you when the
changes are about to be written to disk, so you can back off.

Xandros OCE (aka ODE) may work well, and even if you install
that OS at first, you can always reuse the partition that
the Xandros installer made and install FC4 on it. Ergo with
a Mandrake install from the Brugge live CD.

Xandros has a good user forum; the "Install" section ought
to have a lot of posts relating experiences with resizing a
Windows ntfs partition with the Xandros installer. You
could also post your query there; they are very helpful. Of
course, the same holds for FC and Mandriva; they have good
user forums and a base of knowledge about how their
installer deals with Windows XP partitions.

Partition Magic is predominently geared toward Windows
users, and it costs money, plenty of it. You can also
download a free demo of a competing product "Acronis
Partition Expert" (or a larger Acronis package that includes
the partitioning utility) that will allow you to diagnose
and partition your HD in simulation; the actual
write-to-disk part is disabled in the demo, so it's
completely safe.

Good luck!

Robert

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