Resize ntfs system partitions with GParted?

Question

Trying to resize 2 ntfs system and boot partitions (windows 2003 server) using GParted. Goal:

• Resize D: (/dev/sda1) to ~850G - this is the boot drive with D:\ntldr, boot.ini, etc.
• Resize C: (/dev/sda5) to 100G - this is the system drive with C:\windows

Tried resizing /dev/sda5 first and got the chkdsk error shown in screenshot #2. (You must run chkdsk /f). Have already run chkdsk /f on C: multiple times with no bad sectors or errors found. Have also run multiple chkdsk /f's on the underlying hard disk multiple times and rebooted way more than a couple times with the same error.

1. How do you force gparted to ignore this error and resize? I found there is --force option to ntfsresize but don't know how to get the GParted ISO live CD to use it.

2. How do you move the unallocated space so an extra ~750G is to the right of /dev/sda1 (D:), and an extra 10G to the right of /dev/sda5 (C:)

Solution 1

In answer to your second question: while you can resize partitions, you cannot move them. The start of a filesystem cannot be changed. So if you want to add 10 GiB after drive C: D:, you'll need to delete drive D: C: and recreate it in the proper location. Second, you should delete your extended partition sda2 and recreate it to fill the remainder of the space. Otherwise, you'll be restricted by the boundary at the end of sda2; you can't make a partition cross that border.

Also... if the check keeps failing, it may point to a bad disk.

Solution 2

This may be more difficult than you would like.

Looking at the screenshot, here is what I would do:

1. Try to resize the C drive partition in Windows (assuming you have a version that has the Disk Management utility to do so, i.e. not XP home). This may potentially eliminate any bizarre issue with GParted.
2. Resize the extended partition to the desired size
3. Image the extended partition
4. Delete the extended partition
5. Resize Drive D to the desired 850GB
6. Restore the imaged partition

That should hopefully work, assuming that the configuration files in Drive D knows where to find drive C.

Comments

[reowil]

Sorry, I don't see a link to the screenshot.

[Michael Lowman]

@Phanto I figured as much :) it's in the post, not linked. i.imgur.com/qlEeD.png and i.imgur.com/8baV2.png

[reowil]

Ahh, my company's firewall blocked it.

[Michael Lowman]

@Phanto here you go: sda1 primary partition drive d: 92 GiB, sda2 extended partition 760 GiB containing (sda5 drive c: 19 GiB, unallocated 740 GiB), remainder (98 GiB) unallocated. Now you can join in :) oh, and the second shows a failure in cluster accounting is causing the check failure.

[reowil]

Thanks Mike. Luckily my Android phone isn't on the company firewall ;). Unfortunately, ane's problem won't be easy to solve.

[Hello71]

@ane: Have you tried running ntfsfix/ntfscheck on /dev/sda5?

[Michael Lowman]

Phanto's quite right. tbh, backup reinstall restore may be easier. I stand by my worries about the disk, though: if that error didn't go away with a forced check on Windows, you have problems.

[sqrepants]

There is the option in GParted to Move a partition, so apparently it's possible, though I don't know if Windows will boot anymore if the partition is not in the same place.

[sqrepants]

I can't delete drive D: because that is the boot partition - it contains D:\ntldr and D:\boot.ini

[Michael Lowman]

I could be wrong, since I don't usually use parted, but I think that option is more for moving partitions between disks rather than moving from one location to another overlapping location. You could do this by making a bit-copy backup of the partition with dd and then restoring it, but you'd have to have somewhere to store the data. I believe parted's "move" is more of a "copy-then-delete" thing

[reowil]

Have you tried resizing the partitions using diskpart in a recovery console? Command line interfaces are not very nice, but it might just work.

[reowil]

As it turns out, Server 2003 is different with partitioning than standard non-server. support.microsoft.com/kb/325590 states "System or boot volumes may be blocked from being extended". Apparently, people have used 3rd party utilities to perform the re-size. Perhaps GParted just can't do it.

[sqrepants]

Michael, have you or anyone used any other applications such as Acronis or Ghost to do similar resizing on win2003 system/boot partitions? I looked at Acronis and the screenshots of their Linux resize screen look similar to GParted resize dialog, so I'm not sure if it work.

[Michael Lowman]

I have not. I've only ever needed ntfsresize, actually; I usually avoid using multiple system partitions for Windows. I also just realized that I misread your screenshot. I intended to say you would need to delete and replace the C: partition. Of course, this can only be done with appropriate backups or reinstallation. It's a tricky setup.

[sqrepants]

Has anyone heard resizing system partitions via Backup Exec System Recovery? It claims it can do it, but I'm not so sure if the free space is not directly after the D: drive ... Am downloading a trial and will let you know but was wondering if anyone else had tried. Thanks so much for your help thus far, Michael and Phanto!

[Michael Lowman]

What is your goal now? Is it to keep the current installation, or just save the data? Also, are you saying your system is currently unbootable? Basically, you only have two options: a) reinstall windows. b) perform a bit-for-bit copy of C: to an external disk, delete everything apart from sda1, resize sda1, recreate a partition exactly the same size as your old C: but now where you want it to start, resize that partition, go back and finish partitioning everything. If you choose the latter, I'll edit my answer above

[sqrepants]

Goal: Get Backup Exec System Recovery (or any software) to restore the original C: partition to a new 300GB SAS drive, and get it to restore the original D: partition to a new 2TB SATA drive. Original system is still bootable. We're working off a Backup Exec System Recovery image of the data on the new server. The new server is unbootable. If we do a bit-for-bit copy of C: to another disk, won't we run into boot trouble because the disk controller is totally different?

[Michael Lowman]

ah, I thought you were attempting to use the same disk. bit for bit would work, but should be functionally equivalent to your Backup Exec copy. if you're saying that the bootloader partition is working and loading, but just points to the old now-non-existent windows install, have you tried editing the boot.ini manually? alternatively, are you certain that the new disk is detected without loading additional drivers? last, why do you want such a massive bootloader partition? could there be a way around this issue?

[sqrepants]

Yes, am going to try editing the boot.ini manually via a Knoppix CD. Not sure what to set the values to though. Not sure the new disk is detected but Symantec did ask for the SAS drivers during the restore. As for such as massive bootloader partition, we'd ideally like to make C: just the boot loader and separate it completely from the D: drive which would be used for just data.

[sqrepants]

Woo, got it to boot by editing boot.ini with Knoppix! Changed it from default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS to default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINDOWS and now it actually boots. Now the problem is I get a LSASS.EXE System Error - Directory Service cannot start error 0xc00002e1. Press OK to shutdown the system. Use Recovery Console to diagnose further. Will have to research this. Thanks so much Michael Lowman for getting me this far.

[Michael Lowman]

hope you get it :) it's so confusing that unix uses the exact opposite terms for boot and system partitions, that was messing me up some. good luck!