1NTFSRESIZE(8) System Manager's Manual NTFSRESIZE(8)
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6 ntfsresize - resize an NTFS filesystem without data loss
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9 ntfsresize [OPTIONS] --info(-mb-only) DEVICE
10 ntfsresize [OPTIONS] [--size SIZE[k|M|G]] DEVICE
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13 The ntfsresize program safely resizes Windows XP, Windows Server 2003,
14 Windows 2000, Windows NT4 and Longhorn NTFS filesystems without data
15 loss. All NTFS versions are supported, used by 32-bit and 64-bit Win‐
16 dows. Defragmentation is NOT required prior to resizing because the
17 program can relocate any data if needed, without risking data integ‐
18 rity.
19 Ntfsresize can be used to shrink or enlarge any NTFS filesystem located
21 on an unmounted DEVICE (usually a disk partition). The new filesystem
22 will fit in a DEVICE whose desired size is SIZE bytes. The SIZE param‐
23 eter may have one of the optional modifiers k, M, G, which means the
24 SIZE parameter is given in kilo-, mega- or gigabytes respectively.
25 Ntfsresize conforms to the SI, ATA, IEEE standards and the disk manu‐
26 facturers by using k=10^3, M=10^6 and G=10^9.
27 If both --info(-mb-only) and --size are omitted then the NTFS filesys‐
29 tem will be enlarged to match the underlying DEVICE size.
30 To resize a filesystem on a partition, you must resize BOTH the
32 filesystem and the partition by editing the partition table on the
33 disk. Similarly to other command line filesystem resizers, ntfsresize
34 doesn't manipulate the size of the partitions, hence to do that you
35 must use a disk partitioning tool as well, for example fdisk(8). Al‐
36 ternatively you could use one of the many user friendly partitioners
37 that uses ntfsresize internally, like Mandriva's DiskDrake, QTParted,
38 SUSE/Novell's YaST Partitioner, IBM's EVMS, GParted or Debian/Ubuntu's
39 Partman.
40 IMPORTANT! It's a good practice making REGULAR BACKUPS of your valu‐
42 able data, especially before using ANY partitioning tools. To do so for
43 NTFS, you could use ntfsclone(8). Don't forget to save the partition
44 table as well!
45 Shrinkage
47 If you wish to shrink an NTFS partition, first use ntfsresize to shrink
48 the size of the filesystem. Then you could use fdisk(8) to shrink the
49 size of the partition by deleting the partition and recreating it with
50 the smaller size. Do not make the partition smaller than the new size
51 of NTFS otherwise you won't be able to boot. If you did so notwith‐
52 standing then just recreate the partition to be as large as NTFS.
53 Enlargement
55 To enlarge an NTFS filesystem, first you must enlarge the size of the
56 underlying partition. This can be done using fdisk(8) by deleting the
57 partition and recreating it with a larger size. Make sure it will not
58 overlap with another existing partition. You may enlarge upwards
59 (first sector unchanged) or downwards (last sector unchanged), but you
60 may not enlarge at both ends in a single step. If you merge two NTFS
61 partitions, only one of them can be expanded to the merged partition.
62 After you have enlarged the partition, you may use ntfsresize to en‐
63 large the size of the filesystem.
64 Partitioning
66 When recreating the partition by a disk partitioning tool, make sure
67 you create it at the same starting sector and with the same partition
68 type as before. Otherwise you won't be able to access your filesystem.
69 Use the 'u' fdisk command to switch to the reliable sector unit from
70 the default cylinder one.
71 Also make sure you set the bootable flag for the partition if it ex‐
73 isted before. Failing to do so you might not be able to boot your com‐
74 puter from the disk.
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77 Below is a summary of all the options that ntfsresize accepts. Nearly
78 all options have two equivalent names. The short name is preceded by -
79 and the long name is preceded by --. Any single letter options, that
80 don't take an argument, can be combined into a single command, e.g.
81 -fv is equivalent to -f -v. Long named options can be abbreviated to
82 any unique prefix of their name.
83 -c, --check
85 By using this option ntfsresize will only check the device to
86 ensure that it is ready to be resized. If not, it will print any
87 errors detected. If the device is fine, nothing will be
88 printed.
89 -i, --info
91 By using this option without --expand, ntfsresize will determine
92 the theoretically smallest shrunken filesystem size supported.
93 Most of the time the result is the space already used on the
94 filesystem. Ntfsresize will refuse shrinking to a smaller size
95 than what you got by this option and depending on several fac‐
96 tors it might be unable to shrink very close to this theoretical
97 size. Although the integrity of your data should be never in
98 risk, it's still strongly recommended to make a test run by us‐
99 ing the --no-action option before real resizing.
100 Practically the smallest shrunken size generally is at around
102 "used space" + (20-200 MB). Please also take into account that
103 Windows might need about 50-100 MB free space left to boot
104 safely.
105 If used in association with option --expand, ntfsresize will de‐
107 termine the smallest downwards expansion size and the possible
108 increments to the size. These are exact byte counts which must
109 not be rounded. This option may be used after the partition has
110 been expanded provided the upper bound has not been changed.
111 This option never causes any changes to the filesystem, the par‐
113 tition is opened read-only.
114 -m, --info-mb-only
116 Like the info option, only print out the shrinkable size in MB.
117 Print nothing if the shrink size is the same as the original
118 size (in MB). This option cannot be used in association with
119 option --expand.
120 -s, --size SIZE[k|M|G]
122 Resize filesystem to fit in a partition whose size is
123 SIZE[k|M|G] bytes by shifting its end and keeping its beginning
124 unchanged. The filesystem size is set to be at least one sector
125 smaller than the partition. The optional modifiers k, M, G mean
126 the SIZE parameter is given in kilo-, mega- or gigabytes respec‐
127 tively. Conforming to standards, k=10^3, M=10^6 and G=10^9.
128 ki=2^10, Mi=2^20 and Gi=2^30 are also allowed. Use this option
129 with --no-action first.
130 -x, --expand
132 Expand the filesystem to the current partition size, shifting
133 down its beginning and keeping its end unchanged. The metadata
134 is recreated in the expanded space and no user data is relo‐
135 cated. This is incompatible with option -s (or --size) and can
136 only be made if the expanded space is an exact multiple of the
137 cluster size. It must also be large enough to hold the new meta‐
138 data.
139 If the expansion is interrupted for some reason (power outage,
141 etc), you may restart the resizing, as the original data and
142 metadata have been kept unchanged.
143 Note : expanding a Windows system partition and filesystem down‐
145 wards may lead to the registry or some files not matching the
146 new system layout, or to some important files being located too
147 far from the beginning of the partition, thus making Windows not
148 bootable.
149 -f, --force
151 Forces ntfsresize to proceed with the resize operation either
152 without prompting for an explicit acceptance, or if the filesys‐
153 tem is marked for consistency check. Double the option (-ff,
154 --force --force) to avoid prompting even if the file system is
155 marked for check.
156 Please note, ntfsresize always marks the filesystem for consis‐
158 tency check before a real resize operation and it leaves that
159 way for extra safety. Thus if NTFS was marked by ntfsresize then
160 it's safe to use this option. If you need to resize several
161 times without booting into Windows between each resizing steps
162 then you must use this option.
163 -n, --no-action
165 Use this option to make a test run before doing the real resize
166 operation. Volume will be opened read-only and ntfsresize dis‐
167 plays what it would do if it were to resize the filesystem.
168 Continue with the real resizing only if the test run passed.
169 -b, --bad-sectors
171 Support disks having hardware errors, bad sectors with those
172 ntfsresize would refuse to work by default.
173 Prior using this option, it's strongly recommended to make a
175 backup by ntfsclone(8) using the --rescue option, then running
176 'chkdsk /f /r volume:' on Windows from the command line. If the
177 disk guarantee is still valid then replace it. It's defected.
178 Please also note, that no software can repair these type of
179 hardware errors. The most what they can do is to work around the
180 permanent defects.
181 This option doesn't have any effect if the disk is flawless.
183 -P, --no-progress-bar
185 Don't show progress bars.
186 -v, --verbose
188 More output.
189 -V, --version
191 Print the version number of ntfsresize and exit.
192 -h, --help
194 Display help and exit.
195
197 The exit code is 0 on success, non-zero otherwise.
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200 No reliability problem is known. If you find a bug please send an
201 email describing the problem to the development team at:
202 ntfs-3g-devel@lists.sf.net
203 There are a few very rarely met restrictions at present: filesystems
205 having unknown bad sectors, relocation of the first MFT extent and re‐
206 sizing into the middle of a $MFTMirr extent aren't supported yet. These
207 cases are detected and resizing is restricted to a safe size or the
208 closest safe size is displayed.
209 Ntfsresize schedules an NTFS consistency check and after the first boot
211 into Windows you must see chkdsk running on a blue background. This is
212 intentional and no need to worry about it. Windows may force a quick
213 reboot after the consistency check. Moreover after repartitioning your
214 disk and depending on the hardware configuration, the Windows message
215 System Settings Change may also appear. Just acknowledge it and reboot
216 again.
217 The disk geometry handling semantic (HDIO_GETGEO ioctl) has changed in
219 an incompatible way in Linux 2.6 kernels and this triggered multitudi‐
220 nous partition table corruptions resulting in unbootable Windows sys‐
221 tems, even if NTFS was consistent, if parted(8) was involved in some
222 way. This problem was often attributed to ntfsresize but in fact it's
223 completely independent of NTFS thus ntfsresize. Moreover ntfsresize
224 never touches the partition table at all. By changing the 'Disk Access
225 Mode' to LBA in the BIOS makes booting work again, most of the time.
226 You can find more information about this issue in the Troubleshooting
227 section of the below referred Ntfsresize FAQ.
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230 ntfsresize was written by Szabolcs Szakacsits, with contributions from
231 Anton Altaparmakov and Richard Russon. It was ported to ntfs-3g by
232 Erik Larsson and Jean-Pierre Andre.
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235 Many thanks to Anton Altaparmakov and Richard Russon for libntfs, the
236 excellent documentation and comments, to Gergely Madarasz, Dewey M.
237 Sasser and Miguel Lastra and his colleagues at the University of Grana‐
238 da for their continuous and highly valuable help, furthermore to Erik
239 Meade, Martin Fick, Sandro Hawke, Dave Croal, Lorrin Nelson, Geert Hen‐
240 drickx, Robert Bjorkman and Richard Burdick for beta testing the relo‐
241 cation support, to Florian Eyben, Fritz Oppliger, Richard Ebling,
242 Sid-Ahmed Touati, Jan Kiszka, Benjamin Redelings, Christopher Haney,
243 Ryan Durk, Ralf Beyer, Scott Hansen, Alan Evans for the valued contri‐
244 butions and to Theodore Ts'o whose resize2fs(8) man page originally
245 formed the basis of this page.
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248 ntfsresize is part of the ntfs-3g package and is available from:
249 https://github.com/tuxera/ntfs-3g/wiki/
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252 fdisk(8), cfdisk(8), sfdisk(8), parted(8), evms(8), ntfsclone(8),
253 mkntfs(8), ntfsprogs(8)
254ntfs-3g 2022.10.3 July 2013 NTFSRESIZE(8)