The XP defrag put most of the data at the bottom of the NTFS partition, but left some of it about half-way up, with a gap in the middle. A bit of web-trawling revealed that NTFS does this to reserve space for some tables that it needs. If the disk gets too full, it then sacrifices this reserved space last. The net effect was that the Mandrake partitioning tool was fooled, and wouldn't do the job - not usefully, anyway. I had to resort to a proprietary solution.
This was under MDK 9.2.
Douglas.
Wayne Rooney wrote:
-----Original Message----- From: Ross Drummond <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: CLUG mailing list <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Date: Saturday, May 29, 2004 10:20 AM Subject: ntfresize
It was a completely new install with no software other than the OS loaded.The
disk was defragmented immediately after 1st boot.
The XP defrag will move stuff to the end of the partition, thus making it harder to shrink the partition. In effect, by doing the defrag, you are creating stuff that you will have to move if you want to shrink the partition.
This operation took 3 hours to complete.
Highly unusual.
The maintainer reports that a combination of certain bios settings, 2.6
kernel, and some disk partitioning program's can make Windows operating
systems unbootable. Problems have been reported with Mandrake 10, SUSE 9.1
and Fedora 2 distos.
The solution, as covered by Robert, boot a Knoppix cd and use qtparted. Qtparted uses ntfsresize code anyway. DiskDrake also incorporates ntfsresize and since we're installing Mandrake it should be on the first install disk ready to go. (Could somebody with an XP computer boot the first Mandrake install disk and check that for us?)
If we are to offer disk repartitioning at the install fest we have further
investigations to make
Investigations were done, here's the results: http://linuxmafia.com/faq/Filesystems/ntfs.html
Wayne
