Resize NTFS partition?

[gaf at blu.org (Jerry Feldman)]

On Sun, 01 Apr 2007 08:43:00 -0400
Scott R Ehrlich <scott at MIT.EDU> wrote:

> I'm looking for a bootable CD/DVD linux distro that will support the resizing of
> an existing bootable NTFS partition.   I want to convert one of my home PCs from
> existing whole-disk NTFS Windows to half XP and half Linux.
> 
> Knoppix 5.0.1 parted doesn't support ntfs yet, as won't FC5.
I have successfully resized Windows XP NTFS partitions with Knoppix
4.0 using qtparted. I've done this at a number of installfests, and
I've done this while teaching my Linux for the Desktop course at
Northeastern. 

The procedure I use is:
1. Make sure you backup the system. This is always important. 
2. Use Windows to defrag its NTFS partition. NTFS can get quite
fragmented.
3. Boot Knoppix and run QTParted.
4. Resize as desired. You can use QTParted to allocate the free space
as Linux or you can do that while installing Linux. 
5. Boot into Windows and let it run chkdisk if it wants to. Make sure
everything is ok with Windows. I did have a case in an installfest
where Windows did complain about something, but running checkdisk fixed
it. Note that Windows NT checkdisk is generally run only during boot.
(I don't know if it is chkdsk or checkdisk). 
Once you verify that Windows is ok, then install Linux. 
-- 
Jerry Feldman <gaf at blu.org>
Boston Linux and Unix user group
http://www.blu.org PGP key id:C5061EA9
PGP Key fingerprint:053C 73EC 3AC1 5C44 3E14 9245 FB00 3ED5 C506 1EA9