1 Topic by MegaJim

  • MegaJim
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Topic: GParted LIVE caused NTFS corruption? Or just revealed it...

Hi, thanks to the developers for an amazing software in GParted.

Situation : Single 40gb Toshiba laptop HD in the format:

[Primary partition 1, NTFS][Primary partition 2, lba[logic part. 1, reiser3][logic part. 2, reiser 3][logic part.3 linux swap]]

Basically, I shunted up the logical partitions in the 2nd primary partition to create some space for the first primary partition.

Next I resized the second primary partition to create free space for the first primary partition to expand.

Being a nervous so-and-so, I decided to check I could still boot into linux after theses initial changes - great it worked, however XP on the first primary partition failed with checkdisk/restarts.

On further inspection the log files from my first run of GParted LIVE revealed several warnings about ntfs corruption after the second primary partition was shortened.

Checkdisk wasn't able to run on XP boot (I think due to some windows security software I have installed) so I ran CHKDSK /r from the XP recovery console on the ntfs partition which seemed to fix the problem.

After this, I expanded the first primary partition into the free space with no further errors.

Is this corruption something to be concerned about?  Considering it occured without the ntfs partition being touched, its slightly bemusing to me how this happened and I'm concerned that it could indicate a possible bug.

Best regards.

2 Reply by class413

  • class413
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Re: GParted LIVE caused NTFS corruption? Or just revealed it...

I think this usually occurs when we don't shutdown windows properly. It seems that the ntfs system uses some "journaling". Is this case, we have to boot into windows, check the filesystem and then close it properly to leave the filesystem "clean".
Gparted doesn't proceed to ntfs resizing if it detects any corruption.

*** It is highly recommended to backup any important files before doing resize/move operations. ***

3 Reply by MegaJim

  • MegaJim
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Re: GParted LIVE caused NTFS corruption? Or just revealed it...

Before I changed anything the ntfs partition was scanned and intact, only after the other partition was moved was any corruption detected.

4 Reply by class413

  • class413
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Re: GParted LIVE caused NTFS corruption? Or just revealed it...

I think this check is done just when gparted starts to work on the partition, not before.

Anyeway, ther is another tool, ntfsfix, included in the gparted livecd as well as in the knoppix livecd, that can fix some basic ntfs errors.
You can run it from a terminal window by

ntfsfix /dev/...
... is the name of the specific partition.

Related page:
http://man.linux-ntfs.org/ntfsfix.8.html

*** It is highly recommended to backup any important files before doing resize/move operations. ***