I have dual boot Win10 and Linux (manjaro), and I want to shrink my NTFS C:\ partition to free up space in my ext4 root partition on the same physical drive.

I keep reading online that NTFS partitioning is best handled by Windows itself. However, Windows cannot partition ext4, so I thought I’d use a live GParted session for the ext4 extending part only.

So why not shrink my C:\ partition IN WINDOWS, obtain my unallocated space, then boot into live GParted, and use the unallocated space to extend my ext4 root.

This, or do everything from GParted in one go? What has the best chance of success?

I could also install GParted on my running Linux distro, and do the extending from there. But I feel like GParted live would somehow be more… better?

  • catloaf@lemm.eeEnglish
    0·
    5 months ago

    I don’t think you can shrink an active partition, especially if you’re booted from it. Just use gparted live, it’s fine. I prefer doing all my resizes offline. The only thing I do online is extending.

    • Stillhart@lemm.ee
      0·
      5 months ago

      I shrunk my Win10 partition from within Windows to make space to dual boot into linux so you definitely can shrink an active partition.

          • catloaf@lemm.eeEnglish
            0·
            5 months ago

            Yup. If data has to be moved, that’s one read and one write, in different parts of the disk. That’s going to be slow. (At least they’d be sequential, I think.)

        • catloaf@lemm.eeEnglish
          0·
          5 months ago

          Huh, they must have changed that at some point. Last time I checked (which was probably many years ago at this point) they didn’t support it. I’ve just always used tools like gparted because I got used to them.

          • MentalEdge@sopuli.xyz
            0·
            5 months ago

            It’s kind of hit or miss. Depending on how full the partition is and how exactly the data is arranged, windows may not be able to shrink even a non-boot partition.

            The built-in partition manager doesn’t seem to be capable of rearranging anything, so you kind of just have to rely on luck for the shrink operation to be possible.

            Hence why third party tools like easus are still in business on the windows side.

              • MrTHXcertified@lemdro.idEnglish
                0·
                5 months ago

                I seem to remember disabling hibernation and swapfile, then defragging, seemed to significantly increase the chances of success shrinking an active partition.

                (Re-enable hibernation/swap after the shrink operation is finished.)