1 Topic by naiserie (edited by naiserie 2009-12-12 03:21:02)

  • naiserie
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Topic: [SOLVED]Current NTFS size is bigger than the device size

Hi all:

Same error as quite a few other people it seems, but no straight forward fix, so thanks for your time/energy in trying to help me out in advance.

I was trying to shrink a 160GB XP drive/partition and create a new 40GB partition to install Windows 7 on.  Something clearly didn't go right but I didn't notice until Windows XP gave me BSOD while trying to boot.  Launched the live cd again and notice the familiar error on the 120GB partition.

Here are my MBR and PBR:
http://www.mediafire.com/file/tnmyzmgk5tz/sdb.mbr
http://www.mediafire.com/file/zmdzjxnqxiz/sdb1.pbr

I appreciate any help you might be able to give me.  I should note that I'm nearly a complete noob and it took me an hour just to figure out how to mount my usb drive and copy the mbr/pbr to it, so if you could be extra explicit with any instructions, I'd really appreciate that as well.

2 Reply by gedakc

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Re: [SOLVED]Current NTFS size is bigger than the device size

Well congratulations on figuring as much out as you have already done.  You are certainly more knowledgeable than a "noob" in my books.  smile

In your situation since you have another partition after sdb1, I think it is safer if we decrease the NTFS volume size to fit within the partition size.

The change I have made to the file is from a length of 312,560,568 sectors:
00000020   00 00 00 00  80 00 80 00  B8 4B A1 12  00 00 00 00
To a new length of 230,661,206 sectors:
00000020   00 00 00 00  80 00 80 00  56 9C BF 0D  00 00 00 00

Note:  The NTFS volume size is always 1 sector less than the total number of sectors in the partition table entry because the NTFS backup sector is not considered part of the NTFS volume.

To apply this change:

1) Download the new NTFS PBR: sdb1-naiserie_new.pbr

2) Load the new NTFS PBR on your hard disk.
NOTE:  Be extra careful when entering the commands.  Data loss could result otherwise.

dd if=sdb1-naiserie_new.pbr of=/dev/sdb bs=512 count=1 seek=63

3) Reboot the computer

4) Check that the file system is recognized in GParted

5) If all seems fine then I would advise booting into Windows and running "chkdsk /f /r" multiple times, until there are no more faults.

3 Reply by naiserie

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Re: [SOLVED]Current NTFS size is bigger than the device size

gedakc, you rule!  thank you so much!  wish I could send you some ebeers as thanks for solving this problem over and over and over again for everyone, and especially me, in less than 20 minutes!

chkdsk is running a 2nd tie now and no errors so far.  when it's clean and good, I'll update the thread title to [solved].

again, thank you very much for your work with this issue.

4 Reply by gedakc

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Re: [SOLVED]Current NTFS size is bigger than the device size

Glad to hear that the problem is solved.  smile

And thanks for editing the initial post and marking the title as solved.