How can I resize an NTFS disk image in Windows?

Question

I saved a disk partition to an .IMG file, but it's only 128MB. What tool can I use to resize it to 256MB and keep it still bootable?

Answer 1

I'm not aware of any Windows tools able to deal with raw filesystem images, so here's a Linux answer. Use any Live CD – Gparted, Ubuntu, etc.

1. Expand the "partition" by appending 128 MB of any data:

   $ set -o noclobber
   
   $ dd if=/dev/zero bs=1M count=128 >> imagefile.img
   

2. Expand the inside filesystem:

   $ sudo -s
   
   # device=$(losetup -f)
   # losetup $device imagefile.img
   
   # bytes=$(stat -c %s imagefile.img) 
   

   ('dd' uses binary megabytes while 'ntfsresize -s' takes decimal ones; therefore -s 256M would not work as expected and you have to specify the size in bytes.)

   # ntfsresize -s $bytes -n $device
   # ntfsresize -s $bytes $device
   

   (The first command, with -n, does a test run. The second, without -n, actually resizes the filesystem.)

   # losetup -d $device