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From: Anton A. <ai...@ca...> - 2007-05-11 18:01:26
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Hi, On 11 May 2007, at 17:34, Jeremy L. Moles wrote: > We are currently using the latest CVS checkout of ntfsprogs. I have > read > online that these should support Vista resizing fine and, in fact, the > first few Vista machines we saw worked okay. Recently, though, all of > the Sony, IBM/Lenovo, and Dell Vista machines we've received simply do > not work consistently w/ any of the ntfsprogs. > > Without ever even booting a machine into Windows once, we netboot > into a > small Linux image. At this point, we ask ntfsresize to operate on the > Vista partition. It always says that the partition is dirty and > recommends we run chkdsk--which we can do, to no effect. (I also read > you have to use a non-Vista chkdsk, though I have no idea how one > would > go about acquiring that as my Windows knowledge--and that of my > associates--is limited only to very basic usage.) You likely are receving the laptops in a hibernated/suspended state instead of a true shutdown state. This is why the volumes are dirty and why using ntfsresize totally screws up the volume and why chkdsk does not help. As an experiment to see if my guess is correct, before doing the netboot, boot the laptop into the native on-disk Vista installation, then shut it down (you can do this on the login screen or once logged in, does not matter) by clicking on "Shut down options" (this is the little arrow button on the right of the shutdown button when not logged in and on the right of the lock button on the start menu once logged in) and then choosing "shut down" from the menu that appears. By default when you click the start menu and from that you click what looks like to be a "power off" button Vista actually hibernates instead of shutting down. That makes it look like Vista takes hardly any time to start/shutdown but in reality it cheats by using suspend to disk instead. Now once the machine is shut down correctly, try your linux netboot image and see if ntfsresize still complains... The other point worthy of note is that Vista Ultimate at least has a built-in NTFS resizer so you can use that instead of Linux-NTFS ntfsresize then you know it will work. Probably not what you wanted to hear but it is worth mentioning because you may not be aware of it... Best regards, Anton -- Anton Altaparmakov <aia21 at cam.ac.uk> (replace at with @) Unix Support, Computing Service, University of Cambridge, CB2 3QH, UK Linux NTFS maintainer, http://www.linux-ntfs.org/ |
