[kasperl]

NTFS Write is the thing I'm looking for.

[Admiral LSD]

As long as you have at least read support for all the fs's you plan to use under each OS you plan to use write support isn't really necessary. Back when I ran Linux I found the lack of even read support in Windows for the XFS filesystem I was using to be infinitely more annoying than not being able to write to NTFS under Linux.

[kasperl]

Dunno, writing is kind of important. Anyway, even assuming I'll go for reiser FS, or even whatever OS/2 uses, if I can't resize the NTFS partition in the first place, it's no use.

Would it work if I emptied the thing with FDISK, used parted to make a 70GB partition at the last 70GB, leaving the first 10 empty, formatted the 70GB into something windows will never see (ext2), then install windows, hopefully in an NTFS on the first 10, and then reformat the ext2 into whatever I decide to use?

[Admiral LSD]

OS/2 uses HPFS of which, NTFS is an offshoot

(You're not seriously planning on running OS/2 on an AMD64 machine are you? I had enough trouble making it work on my old P2...)

You'll get your write support when you boot into the other OSes. As long as you can read the partition formats of the others you can simply copy any data over once you reboot (or, if it's media files like videos or MP3s, simply play them in situ). That's

On another note, if the machine isn't running anything but XP now and has a 80Gb HDD, 70 of which you want to make a data partition, you'll only have to resize it again to install something else. Admittedly, there are a fair few more partition resizers for FAT then NTFS but it'll still be a hassle. If you plan on using it as a shared network drive, the physical fs will be transparent to any OS connecting to it.

[kasperl]

I know I'll have to re-resize the FAT, but resizing FAT is 5 lines in parted. I did that a few times, and it's easy, and won't FUBAR anything.

Resizing NTFS, on the other hand....

And the OS/2 thing is a joke, I couldn't think of a non Windows OS with a worse reputation.

[Gapie]

MEH, people recommending Partitionmagic are just plain nuts. I used it on a new hard drive I had installed on this particular machine, and when I needed to restart my PC the master boot table of C: was gone.
So I had to format my whole ******* C: drive which came at a great loss of data

just my 2 cents..

[kasperl]

If the MBR is gone, the data is still there. If you had a second PC, or a Knoppix CD, you could've saved it all.

But yeah, PM is no better then QtParted, as far as I can see.

[Gapie]

Meh, I needed to use the PC that same day again. I do have a second pc, but my dad wouldnt let me tamper with it ( I know ) and besides I dont know how to rewrite the MBR but that is all pointless now as I already formatted.

[Admiral LSD]

I've used Partition Magic to resize my NTFS partitions on several occasions and it's only failed me once. I'd trust it over an open source app any day of the week.

[kasperl]

Using NTFSResize and FDISK from the Knoppix command line worked, oddly enough.

[Kosh]

FDISK can't even see NTFS partitions, can it?

[kasperl]

The linux version, sorry.

And yeah, it can see them, even ID them, and delete them. That's the MS version, AFAIK. The Linux version I found on the Knoppix 3.8 disk could make, resize, delete and change just about anything. Doing so would damage the NTFS filesystem, so you need to use NTFSresize before touching FDISK

[Admiral LSD]

for Linux, cfdisk > fdisk

[kasperl]

I don't really care, because, honestly, fdisk did the job. QtParted didn't. Therefore, fdisk is the tool I'll be using for now.