Resize NTFS Partition

  • Thread starter Thread starter Parley
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Parley

Is there a high quality free software that will safely shrink a NTFS
harddrive partition?

Please point me in the right direction.

TIA
Parley
 
Hi,

Hopefully the 30 day free trial (fully functional) will convince you to pay
for it:

BootIT NG from www.terabyteunlimited.com is safe and reliable and can easily
do this. You do not need to install it, just create the bootable floppy and
boot the system with it. Cancel installation, and enter maintenance. You can
resize the partition with these tools. It will take some time, so be
patient. When done, just click reboot and remove the floppy.

--
Best of Luck,

Rick Rogers, aka "Nutcase" - Microsoft MVP

Associate Expert - WindowsXP Expert Zone

Windows help - www.rickrogers.org
 
Rick,

Is it really a 30days free trial? I checked the site and there isn't any
information about this 30days trial.

Correct me if I'm wrong.
 
Hi,

From the license agreement:

(i) YOU MAY: use the Evaluation Software for evaluation
purposes in your own computer, for a period not to exceed
thirty (30) days after your first installation or use of the
Evaluation Software. You may not re-install or additionally
install the Evaluation Software for additional evaluation
periods.

However, as I noted, you do not need to install it to do what the OP is
asking.

--
Best of Luck,

Rick Rogers, aka "Nutcase" - Microsoft MVP

Associate Expert - WindowsXP Expert Zone

Windows help - www.rickrogers.org
 
The other posters have made excellent suggestions for a solution. Keep
this in mind: Doing ANY kind of partition work can carry very high
risks of complete data loss. Most of these partitioning/converting
utilities are highly reliable and work flawlessly 99.99% of the time.
But when they fail on that .01% of the time the results are usually
catastrophic and more often than not lead to complete data loss. If you
value your data any you will make sure that you have a reliable backup
before you proceed with these utility. A simple user error or a power
outage in the middle of a partitioning job may leave you up the creek
without the proverbial paddle if you have no backup!

John
 
One other hint to make things go more smoothly: Defrag the partitions
involved before resizing. Do a CHKDSK after the defrag to be sure that the
file system is 100% OK, else use CHKDSK with the /F or the /R option to fix
the file system. Backup data, just in case, then resize. A reboot after
changing partition structures is nearly always required.

Finally, if you change the boot partition, it is possible that its volume ID
may change. That is no big deal, except that it is one of the many things
that XP activation examines (retail XP, not pre-installed by PC maker). If
you have made several other changes to hardware (or BIOS) within a 120 day
period, this could be the straw that provokes a re-activation. However,
that is no big deal, but it could be a surprise.
 
I thank all of you for your suggestions and may try BootIt NG this
weekend. I had originally been interested in perfroming this
resizing, because I didn't remember if my Laptop manufacturer had
included install disks and I was afraid of messing up the restore
partition. However, I found the original restore disks, so as long as
I have a good backup of my data files I should be ok. Of course if I
do have to restore from the restore disks, I will probably be stuck
with the same partition table that I have now. As I understand
Compaq's restore, it resets EVERYTHING back to factory status as far
as the harddrive is concerned, including the partition table.

Thanks again.
 
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