Resizing NTFS/Repartitioning with QTParted

Note: This assumes that you have done the default installation of Windows XP which takes up an entire primary parition and puts an NTFS filesystem in it.

Resizing a partition with NTFS (i.e. Windows XP has this type of filesystem)

For resizing QTParted can be used. QTParted is available on the web for free of cost and by itself but it is also included in the set of applications of several Linux distributions (free of cost as well). We will be using the version of QTParted that comes with the Knoppix 3.3 CD (and in other versions of Knoppix).

• Boot Knoppix. (Most of the time Knoppix should boot with no problem. In case your Knoppix boot gets stalled you can try some cheat codes).
• Open a console
• Type qtparted & . The & is to place the process on the background so we can keep typing on this console. Make sure it is lowercase
• Click on the left side where it names the partition name (i.e hda1,hda2,sda1,sda2...etc). Info about the partition will appear on the right side and it will show you how much of your harddrive it is taking.
• Now you need to figure out how much you can resize the portion occupied by NTFS. So we will use ntfsresize. Type su and hit enter, then ntfsreszie --info /dev/hda1 on the console. Your partition might not be called hda1, so make sure you put the one that corresponds to the one shown in QTparted as ntfs. After this command has executed, you will see at the bottom something like "you can resize at somenumber bytes, somenumber MB." You will use either one of these numbers to specify in qtparted where you want to resize at. In a way you can imagine this as making your partition from 0 to the number you just found out.
• Go back to QTparted and right click on the partition name that had appeared on the righthand side. Then click on properties. Type the number in QTParted in the box that asks where you want to resize at.
• Click ok. This will warn you about the "risky" step you are about to make. Of course, you should always backup your data before you use any of these programs.
• After this command had completed successfully, you will see that now QTParted shows that you have some free space. This is where you are going to install linux at.
• You should go back to windows and make sure no data is lost. Since you have shrunk the NTFS partition, Windows will schedule a chkdisk, so you should not cancel it, instead let windows check your disk for errors.
• You are done! Now you are ready to install Linux since you have allocated some free space
• End of story

For questions or suggestions email me at arodr059@cs.fiu.edu