[3955] in Release_7.7_team
Re: Project idea: Windows partition resizing
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Bill Cattey)
Thu Jul 24 18:37:05 2003
From: Bill Cattey <wdc@MIT.EDU>
To: Greg Hudson <ghudson@mit.edu>
Cc: release-team@mit.edu
In-Reply-To: <200307200402.h6K42YTG002563@error-messages.mit.edu>
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Date: 24 Jul 2003 18:37:02 -0400
Yes, I think the time has come to incorporate this functionality into
the Athena installer.
I've looked over the ntfsresize info, and they strongly assert it is
stable and reliable.
I've looked at the qtpartd info. If it's stable enough to work,
offering the GUI as part of an Athena custom install might end up being
VERY user-friendly.
-wdc
On Sun, 2003-07-20 at 00:02, Greg Hudson wrote:
> It appears that there are a couple of free Linux utilities out there
> which are capable of resizing Windows partitions:
>
> * parted (http://www.gnu.org/software/parted/) can resize FAT16 and
> FAT32 partitions. (It can't necessarily enlarge a FAT16
> partition, depending on the cluster size, but it can always shrink
> them.)
>
> * ntfsresize (http://mlf.linux.rulez.org/mlf/ezaz/ntfsresize.html)
> can resize NTFS partitions.
>
> Both programs appear to be pretty reliable at this point. At some
> point, parted may incorporate the functionality of ntfsresize, but for
> now they're separate.
>
> There are a couple of existing graphical front ends, DiskDrake and
> QTParted. DiskDrake comes from the Mandrake installer and may be
> difficult to separate out (their web page isn't accessible to me right
> now, so I can't really tell), while QTParted is still under
> development. Still, those may be useful.
>
> Anyway, the project idea is to somehow integrate these tools into our
> Linux installer, in order to make it easier to install dual-boot
> machines. The integration might take the form of a general front end
> similar to QTParted or Partition Magic, or there might be a simpler
> interface targetting common cases ("You have this NTFS partition
> covering your whole disk; how much of it can we steal?"), or perhaps
> the latter with a fallback to the former.
