QTparted misreporting partition usage

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QTparted misreporting partition usage

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perseus
*nix forums beginner

Joined: 25 Jun 2005
Posts: 1

Posted: Sat Jun 25, 2005 3:48 pm Post subject: Note

QTparted misreporting partition usage

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

Stefan Patric
*nix forums beginner

Joined: 20 Feb 2005
Posts: 9

Posted: Sat Jun 25, 2005 3:48 pm Post subject: Note

Re: QTparted misreporting partition usage

On Saturday 25 June 2005 08:48, perseus wrote:

Quote:

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?

du reports file space usage on a partition, not partition size as
QTParted reports. Use df for partition size and amount of space
available on each filesystem/partition. Use the -h (human readable)
option.

And FWIW, I'd rather use Partition Magic or some other Windows utility,
intead of a Linux based one, to shrink a Windows partition,
particularly an NTFS one. Less headaches.

--
Stefan Patric
NoLife Polymath Group
tootek2@yahoo.com

Ian Hutchinson
*nix forums beginner

Joined: 14 Apr 2005
Posts: 3

Posted: Sun Jun 26, 2005 3:55 pm Post subject: Note

Re: QTparted misreporting partition usage

perseus wrote:

Quote:

Knoppix partitioning tools were too limited for me when I tried the same
thing:
http://silas.psfc.mit.edu/tp41setup.html

Just running the installer for the first system I used was a much more
satisfactory result. I don't know in detail about FC4, whether it can
handle shrinking your windows partition, though.

Ian Hutchinson

Jim
*nix forums Guru

Joined: 20 Feb 2005
Posts: 609

Posted: Sun Jun 26, 2005 8:11 pm Post subject: Note

Re: QTparted misreporting partition usage

Ian Hutchinson wrote:

Quote:

FWIW, I'd only trust Partition Magic for resizing NTFS partitions. It's
written for the native platform, so you know it pretty much works. Since
MS, in their infinite wisdom, have seen fit not to release the
specifications for the filesystem in their entirety (except to
PowerQuest, since absorbed into the Symantec family, and even to them
under an NDA), what's available for Linux regarding NTFS partition
handling (even /reading/) is entirely guesswork.

--
Cheers, http://www.dotware.co.uk
Jim http://www.dotware-entertainment.co.uk

Unix Sex: { look; find; talk; grep; touch; finger; find; flex; unzip;
mount; workbone; fsck; yes; gasp; fsck; yes; eject; umount; makeclean;
zip; split; done; exit }

jeff
*nix forums beginner

Joined: 23 Mar 2005
Posts: 29

Posted: Sun Jun 26, 2005 11:45 pm Post subject: Note

Re: QTparted misreporting partition usage

Jim wrote:

Quote:

Ian Hutchinson wrote:

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

Knoppix partitioning tools were too limited for me when I tried the
same thing:
http://silas.psfc.mit.edu/tp41setup.html

Just running the installer for the first system I used was a much more
satisfactory result. I don't know in detail about FC4, whether it can
handle shrinking your windows partition, though.

Ian Hutchinson

FWIW, I'd only trust Partition Magic for resizing NTFS partitions. It's
written for the native platform, so you know it pretty much works. Since
MS, in their infinite wisdom, have seen fit not to release the
specifications for the filesystem in their entirety (except to
PowerQuest, since absorbed into the Symantec family, and even to them
under an NDA), what's available for Linux regarding NTFS partition
handling (even /reading/) is entirely guesswork.

This is a very much undeserved slight to the developers of ntfsresize

(used by QTParted and other front-ends). Look at
<http://mlf.linux.rulez.org/mlf/ezaz/ntfsresize.html>. Ntfresize is
very reliable, and has been for quite some time.

Jeff

James Knott
*nix forums Guru

Joined: 07 Mar 2005
Posts: 1233

Posted: Mon Jun 27, 2005 12:19 am Post subject: Note

Re: QTparted misreporting partition usage

jeff wrote:

Quote:

This is a very much undeserved slight to the developers of ntfsresize
(used by QTParted and other front-ends). Look at
http://mlf.linux.rulez.org/mlf/ezaz/ntfsresize.html>. Ntfresize is
very reliable, and has been for quite some time.

FWIW, SuSE 9.3 includes ntfsresize v1.9.4 and uses it in Yast, to resize
partitions.

Robert Glueck
*nix forums beginner

Joined: 23 Apr 2005
Posts: 41

Posted: Mon Jun 27, 2005 1:55 am Post subject: Note

Re: QTparted misreporting partition usage

perseus wrote:

Quote:

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

redvers
*nix forums beginner

Joined: 27 Jun 2005
Posts: 1

Posted: Mon Jun 27, 2005 10:13 pm Post subject: Note

Re: QTparted misreporting partition usage

Robert Glueck wrote:

Quote:

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

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 thought of this and ckecked before I defragged, and yes there were

some files towards the end of the disk, but they moved after the defrag
and weren't the cause of the problem. I think it must have been down to
a bug in the Knoppix version of QTparted I was using, since the
SystemRescueCD version would allow be to resize as much as I liked.

Quote:

Good luck!

Robert

Thanks for everyones helpful advice. This is the first time I've
visitted this forum and will hopefully be back for more.

cheers again

Perseus

Google

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