Is it safe to resize Windows partition with GParted?

Question

Is there any chance that my Widnows will fail to load after resizing its partition?

I remember ~4 years ago i wanted to install Ubuntu as second system on my laptop and i used live-USB with GParted to split my hard drive. Unfortunately after this my Windows 7 failed to load (i do not remember the error text or probably it did infinite restart trying to load). On the other hand i did similar resize several times and i lost my Windows only once and do not know the reason why.

Now i need to instal 2nd OS again but i afriad i will have to reinstall windows after it.

Answer 1

You can resize the Windows partition, and it will still boot. Windows will give an error at start-up the first time saying the disk size doesn't match it's records, it will run checkdisk and update it's records, and then work fine. I've done this many times.

You cannot move the Windows partition though or it won't boot. It's worth pointing out that if you shrink from the left side of the Windows partition what you are actually doing is shrinking, and then moving; ONLY shrink from the right side of the partition. You also should not expand the partition on the left side as again you're actually moving it to the left, and then expanding off the end; ONLY expand from the right side of the paritition.

I would also point out that partitioning is never a 100% safe activity. You are altering the partition table, if that fails (slim chance) your entire disk is at risk for data loss. It's always a good idea to have a backup of your entire drive before engaging in any form of partitioning, not that most people actually do it.

(Here's a screen recording of a shrink operation. Just follow the link, click the filename, and then click the play button. The video is an MP4, and it's under 1MB in size. If your browser doesn't have MP4 support you can download the file and play it locally. https://copy.com/oNztlmbdl1RpY9iI )

Answer 2

Windows can shrink its partitions, too, so why not go with that?

Simply open Disk Management, right-click on the partition you want to resize and fire away. Safety guaranteed.

If you find the space you can gain to be too small, you could defragment the partition (even if it's on a SSD). Don't expect too much, though, there are many immovable elements on a partition.

Answer 3

You should have no issues with Gnome Partition Editor and resizing Windows partitions. I have used in countless times with no issues.

Answer 4

Resizing the boot partition with an external editor (for example GParted) doesn't appear to work for non-NT versions of Windows. Booting will cause an unspecified error on my ancient Windows 98SE virtual machine.

Answer 5

I just used GParted to reduce my Windows a further ~100GB more then Windows Partition Manager would. I carefully watched the process, and it moved over 30GBs in the process.

It worked without a hitch: it's a very smart program. I now trust it. It ended up leaving Windows with less than 1% usable space! Which is great because i could get into Windows 10 and remove over 30% of the stuff, which makes it run better. But be careful.

This fact points out that GParted awesomely moved all the files in the NTFS folder to a tight nit space, and ... I saw it smartly checking for boot loading ability, and checkdisk as well for Windows. Brilliant.