[kasperl]

Ok, last time I tried this, and the time before, I had to completely destroy my partition table and MBR, and start from the ground up.

I want to resize my 80GB (entire disk) Windows XP Home Edition NTFS partition to 10GB, and make the rest a 70 GB FAT file partition. The time before last, I used parted (from the Redhat Linux install disk), and at to return to the OEM to get the drive reset.

This time, I tried QtParted, with NTFSResize, from the Knoppix 3.8 disk. This ended up in me using FDISK (which is a horror to acquire under XP), and FIXMBR (on some Windows XP install floppys I had to grab of the MS site), to destroy any trace of partitioning on the drive. Then the OEM rescue disk could repair te partition.

In short, I need something free to resize an NTFS partition with the OS on it. The system uses AMD64, so anything running on x86 or x86_64 is good. It has to be a tried and tested method, as for why, see the above.

[Admiral LSD]

Partition Magic can do it but it's not exactly free...

Also, 70GB is about 70GB bigger than a FAT partition should be. FAT needs to die a horrible, painful death.

[karajorma]

If you need to use Win98 for something you're stuck with it though.

Be warned that XP can't format a partition that large using FAT 32 anyway. It's limited to 32GB for FAT 32 (Although it can recognise bigger ones if they were formated on win98).

[ZylonBane]

I second the recommendation for PartionMagic. Well worth the money (especially if you get a cheap used copy off eBay like I did). Just tell it how big you want each partition, then let it run.

[Thorn]

And pray the power stays on.

*shakes his fist at Nova Scotia Power*

[Bobboau]

get a UPS

[Thorn]

If I had that kind of money I would have one.

[WMCoolmon]

Originally posted by karajorma
If you need to use Win98 for something you're stuck with it though.

Not quite.

[Kosh]

Partition Magic can do it but it's not exactly free...

It can be free, depending on where you get it.

[karajorma]

Originally posted by WMCoolmon


Not quite.

At a price of $79 I'd rather use FAT 32

[WMCoolmon]

There were some other options, Google for "Windows 98 NTFS"

[Admiral LSD]

Originally posted by karajorma
If you need to use Win98 for something you're stuck with it though

You don't need 98 for anything.

Win9x can die a horrible, painful death too.

[karajorma]

So what's your home phone number then? I'm going to post it everywhere as the number to call for free support on programs which aren't compatible with 2K or XP


9x is horrible operating system but there are people who are stuck with it for the time being.

[kasperl]

I don't particularly need Win98, but I do need read/write under both *nix and XP. And AFAIK, Linux NTFS write is still in quite a sorry state.

I can deal with splitting up the data partitions into really small blocks if necesary, but FDISK seems quite capable of  creating a 80GB FAT partition. Now to tell it to just take the last 70GB and leave the first ten free.....

Partition magic, well, I don't trust eBay and I'd rather not spend too much money on something I only use once or twice.

[WMCoolmon]

Look up captive ntfs, it's always looked like a big pain to me, but it might be good for you.

[kasperl]

According to what I read, it does allow Linux read/write for NTFS, but I'm not sure it also allows resizing of an partition. It actually looks like it doesn't. There's NTFSResize for Linux, but I couldn't get that to work with QtParted.

I also want the partition split, so I don't need to back up about 60GB of data every time I do a format.

[WMCoolmon]

I had no problem resizing my NTFS partition with Yoper (IIRC it had data on it too)

Make sure you defrag before you try to resize it, of course.

If you try that, you just need to let the Yoper installer get to where it brings up qtparted, then quit the installer after the changes are finished.

[Admiral LSD]

Captive works by doing a WINE-style thing on the Windows NTFS driver. It's supposed to work well enough (compared with the native kernel write capabilities anyway) but it's claimed to be quite slow. Not to mention that last time I looked into it, it appeared to be quite complicated to set up (though this will vary from distro to distro).

And cross-OS compatibility is no excuse whatsoever for using FAT. Format your Linux partitions as ext2/3 or even reiserfs and look into the many utilities that let you access those partitions under Windows if it bothers you that much.

[kasperl]

Right now, I have nothing *nix installed, but I want something I can acces from anything, anywhere, without hassle.

Yoper? Another *nix distro? If it's using QtParted as well, I see no use for trying it, since I used the latest QtParted, and NTFSResize  utils, and they ****ed up.

And actually having an installer might do something to the MBR as well, which created some ugly stuff last time.

[Admiral LSD]

Any OS without even NTFS read capability isn't worth using.