qparted issue: cannot split ntfs partition

[Greg Madden]

On Wednesday 19 October 2005 14:33, Samuel Thurston, III wrote:
> I just got a new dell laptop and was eager to install ubuntu in a dual-boot
> configuration with windowsXP. Since Dell no longer ships install CD's and I
> don't want to lose any of the suspend/hibernate functions of my laptop, I
> wanted to resize the NTFS partition to make room for an Ubuntu partiton. I
> was glad to see that on the new live CD, qparted is part of the installed
> packages. I opened it and tried to split the main partition, still leaving
> plenty of space for the hungry windows swap file and several gigs of
> application data. I rearranged the partition as I wanted and hit apply, and
> after roughly 30 seconds of progress bar, the partition table redrew...
> exactly as it was before. I'm a little lost as to where to go from here, I
> don't really have the scratch to drop on a copy of Partition Magic, and
> don't want to even if I did. I tried running an appropriate ntfsresize
> command with the options set to just show me what would happen, not to
> actually do it, and it said everything went fine... I am however, hesitant
> to use ntfsresize in a permanent way as it would seem to have the potential
> to screw things up but good. any suggestions?
>
> TIA,
> Sam

ntfsresize is a bit scary, you have to delete your partitions, then create new 
ones, 'DO NOT Format' Not an intuitive scenario. That said I have resized 
several laptop hd's that came with XP in order to dual boot and it works 
fine. I did this on new laptops so there was no chance of losing any data.
-- 
Greg Madden