I have dual boot Win10 and Linux (manjaro), and I want to shrink my NTFS C:\ partition to free up space in my ext4 root partition on the same physical drive.

I keep reading online that NTFS partitioning is best handled by Windows itself. However, Windows cannot partition ext4, so I thought I’d use a live GParted session for the ext4 extending part only.

So why not shrink my C:\ partition IN WINDOWS, obtain my unallocated space, then boot into live GParted, and use the unallocated space to extend my ext4 root.

This, or do everything from GParted in one go? What has the best chance of success?

I could also install GParted on my running Linux distro, and do the extending from there. But I feel like GParted live would somehow be… better?

  • bloodfart
    2·
    7 months ago

    You will be fine doing your first plan. Defragment your windows drive first (you’re not wearing down your ssd with that operation. Modern ssds have wear leveling tech and are good for like 100k writes so it’s not a big deal to defragment it. Also if it’s getting slower doing a level uhh 2 spinrite scan will fix that by rewriting everything. Ask if you want to know why).

    • laurelraven@lemmy.blahaj.zone
      1·
      7 months ago

      Oh, Gibson finally stopped mucking around with his certainly DOA SQRL project long enough to get Spinrite working on modern systems?

      • bloodfart
        1·
        7 months ago

        No it’s still only x86 lol.

        I’m almost 100% you can get the equivalent of a lvl2 spinrite scan out of badblocks but haven’t tried it yet.

          • bloodfart
            1·
            7 months ago

            I’ve only been able to boot it through “csm” or equivalent methods on uefi systems. Got a stack of slow as molasses soldered storage laptops here that could use it.

            Maybe soon I’ll try to replicate it with badblocks. Better buy a bunch of old m1 mbas if it works.