Is NTFS resizing safe nowadays?

[Rashkae]

Phill MV wrote:
> Hullo.
> I have an extra Windows machine on which I'm running 'buntu inside vmware.
> It's acceptable, but a bit overkill as I plan to do lots of dev work inside
> of it.
> Unfortunately, my company's corporate reimaging policy is... a bit tough, so
> I'd very much like to not kill the windows install.
> 
>>From what I gather, this means Wubi, or shrinking the NTFS partition.
> Wubi's attractive, but I don't want to put with unnecessary performance
> hits.
> 
> So, in a nutshell, is (defragging first and) resizing NTFS partitions safe
> nowadays?
> Last time I looked into it was before I switched full time to Linux back in
> '03.
> 
>

Define Safe?  I would never manipulate partitions unless I was ready to
do a full recovery... The process isn't bugged or error prone, but an
inconveniently timed power outage or hardware failure can do much more
damage than usual.

You failed to mention what version of Windows you use.  If it's Vista,
use Vista's partition resizing tools (Computer management GUI).  This
isn't a suggestion, ntfs tools (last I checked, might be updated now)
does not support changes Vista made, but Vista can resize partitions any
which way live without any need for defraging.