Re: [ntfs-3g-devel] NTFS Clone/Resize from 2TB drive to 250GB drive

[Jean-Pierre A. <jea...@wa...>]

Hi,

Amit Uttamchandani wrote:
> On Fri, Feb 28, 2014 at 08:28:27AM +0100, Jean-Pierre André wrote:
>> Oh, I did not realize you meant resizing and cloning
>> to another drive in a single step... It might be simpler
>> to just copy the files.
>>
>> When resizing in place, any data located beyond the
>> target size is relocated, including metadata. There is
>> nothing special to do for the backup MFT.
>>
> Thanks for clarifying this.
>
>>> Looking at the man pages for both the utilities, it seems that I have to
>>> use ntfsclone to an image and then shrink the fs on that image and then
>>> place in the 250GB drive.
>> Currently you have to do the resizing in place, and in
>> your situation you have to clone to a sparse file.
>> You will need double space in the sparse file, as it will
>> contain both the original data and the relocated one.
>> Resizing will not improve the fragmentation.
>>
> Sorry, I did not understand this. Does this mean the resizing happens at
> the source in place?

Yes, the main purpose for ntfsresize is to shorten a
preinstalled Windows partition to make space for
another OS.

> This might not be possible in our case as the
> source is connected to a write blocker that drops all writes to the
> disk. And how does cloning to a sparse file work?

To clone to a sparse file you only have to designate a
standard file as the target for ntfsclone, instead of
a device.

Regards

Jean-Pierre

> Thanks again for the help,
> Amit
>