Resizing ntfs partition

[Bryan Sant]

On 2/26/07, Kelly Terry <ksterry at mstarmetro.net> wrote:
> I was going to install Fedora on a friends computer.  He has windows xp
> pro installed so I defragmented the drive.  He's using only about 5 gb
> of a 75 gb hard drive.  The graphic showed a lot  (at least 20gb) of
> unused space at the end of the drive after defragmenting.  If I use the
> tool that comes with mandriva for shrinking the ntfs partition by 10 gb
> to install linux will that render the windows ntfs partition unusable?
> I've done this with fat 32 file systems with no problem many times
> before but never on an ntfs partition.  There's really no important
> data to back up - just the windows install with drivers and very little
> software.  Still my friend is nervous and doesn't want to risk a
> windows reinstall.

I've used GParted many times to resize NTFS partitions (I don't know
if this is what Mandriva uses).

http://gparted.sourceforge.net/screenshots.php
http://gparted.sourceforge.net/livecd.php

Once you do the resize, I think a forced scandisk runs when you first
boot back into Windows.  After that, Windows will go through a quick
and automatic "detect new hardware" gyration when the desktop loads.
I've resized NTFS with GParted on four different XP machines and none
of them had any problems.  YMMV.

-Bryan