[Linux-NTFS-Dev] NTFSResize (1.9.0) won't shrink as much as expected

[Dave P. <Dav...@br...>]

Hi there,

I apologize if this is a common question, but I could not quite find the
answer in the documentation.

I am using ntfsresize through qtparted[1] using the latest
SystemRescueCD (www.sysreccd.org), which claims to have ntfsprogs 1.9.0.
I'm trying to use it on a drive that has only 1 partition, which is
NTFS, and approximately 37GB in size. Approx. 17GB are being used.

When trying to resize, it was first reported that I could only free up
about 1-2 MB. But clearly, there should be at least several GB of free
space available. If I read the documentation correctly, this version of
ntfsresize should be able to shrink the filesystem, even without
defragmenting first. However, just to check, I tried defragmenting the
drive with the Windows XP defragger. Ntfsresize was then able to free up
90MB. This is still not nearly enough for my purposes (installing a
Debian system).

Is this a known issue? Is there any known workaround? Or am I doing
something completely wrong...? Any help would be appreciated. Thanks in
advance.

Regards,
Dave Pacheco

[1]: although I've been using ntfsresize through qtparted, I did verify
what it told me by running "ntfsresize --info --no-action" myself, and
got the same results.