Arch Linux

tracuboTL

Member

Registered: 2010-10-04

Posts: 55

[SOLVED] Gparted unable to resize windows 8.1 partition

Hi all,
i've a lenovo e540 laptop with windows 8.1 and i want to install linux on it.
I've already managed to install it, but then windows 8.1 stopped working forcing me to reinstall it, and it have deleted all my previous created partitions...
yeah, i know, windows sucks but i need it for my actual work.
So now i've my laptop with 6 windows partitions, windows 8.1 is on /dev/sda4 and i usually resize it with gparted on a live linux cd before procede to install archlinux on it (i'm not good to make partitions with other tools)

problem is that i can't resize windows partition anymore (tryied with openSuse 13.2 and xubuntu 14.10.01)

the gparted message i get is: "Unable to read the contents of this file system! Because of this some operations may be unavailabe. The cause may be a missing software package. The following list of software packages is required for ntfs file system support: ntfsprogs/ntfs-3g"

i've checked and ntfs-3g is installed and at the latest version (VERSIONE)

On windows 8.1 i've disabled the fast boot option (that actually hibernate the laptop instead of turing it on).

Mounting the partition on live cd work flawless and it allow me to read/write files without any problems.

Problem seem to be that gparted can't know how much big is the filesystem, but monting it with nautilus work and show the right size of the partition.

How do you suggest me to proceed? maybe i can consider partitioning my hard disk from windows directly?

Thanks,
Nico

Last edited by tracuboTL (2014-12-06 18:43:13)

thisoldman

Member

From: Pittsburgh

Registered: 2009-04-25

Posts: 1,172

Re: [SOLVED] Gparted unable to resize windows 8.1 partition

Note: I do not have Windows 8.1, but, shrinking a partition with a Windows operating system can probably be done from inside that installed Windows operating system.  http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/wind … =windows-7

Blasphemist

Member

From: Colorado

Registered: 2013-01-17

Posts: 160

Re: [SOLVED] Gparted unable to resize windows 8.1 partition

Especially when win 8 is newly installed, it does a pretty good job of shrinking it's own partition. So that is an option.

Why 6 partitions? You should have the "c drive", maybe recovery and restore partitions. What else do you have?

How was windows reinstalled? Could there be a problem with the windows partition that is causing this? Using windows disk tools are there any issues? Does GParted report any unusual flags or status?

Those are some questions I'd be asking myself. I'd also try to simplify and combine any un-neccessary partitions to end up with as large a free space as I could and then create my linux partition(s) within that space using GParted or the command line counterparts, prior to linux installation. So that fits pretty much as you planned.

Given what you've said and once you feel that all of the basics are well covered, if you still have this issue I'd think it is reporting this error in error so to speak. I mean if you can use you platform to read, write, modify the data on that partition then I would think you have the ntfs progs needed all installed.

If you require a graphical platform for this work you might want to switch to Antergos so that you can ensure your package installations following the Arch wiki without much difference. But it's also true that you might get a slightly different look at this by learning to use the command line tools and the Arch CD.

I wouldn't try to do any more than the partition shrinking from windows. I'd do the rest in linux and either in Arch or maybe Antergos. The lower level the tool the better. I'm thinking you'll find an unusual partition problem. That's how I'd proceed.

---

Simple and Open

tracuboTL

Member

Registered: 2010-10-04

Posts: 55

Re: [SOLVED] Gparted unable to resize windows 8.1 partition

I don't know why i have yet 6 partitions, maybe Lenovo can ask the question better then me
Anyway it's a win7 laptop with free dvd to upgrade it to win8, so i think that i have OS partition + EFI partition + win7 and win8 reinstall partition and other that i don't know

here you can look how windows and xubuntu (gparted) see my paritions

gparted as you can see can't recognize the size of used/unused size of win8 partition

I have made a hard disk check on windows 8, than live-booted to xubuntu, and even if installer can't resize win8 partition and gparted keep giving me the error, i can actually resize it from gparted.

But as you and thisoldman suggest, i think is better to resize from windows8 and then create linux partition from livecd

Cheers
Nico

tracuboTL

Member

Registered: 2010-10-04

Posts: 55

Re: [SOLVED] Gparted unable to resize windows 8.1 partition

Solved using windows8 partitioning, quite easy and instantaneous