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3molo
Asked: 2011-03-17 11:27:47 +0800 CST

Clone and resize NTFS GPT partition?

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I have a ntfs partition, GPT, of 5.6 TB containing only 200 GB of data, that I need to fit onto a 1 TB partition (of a vmware ESXi guest).
Vmware converter does not support GPT.
Acronis disk director does not support GPT.

As I am not very familiar with the Windows operating system, I would rather not copy over "network shares", ftp or similar - I foresee too many problems with that. (correct me if Im wrong!).

I could dd/parted/gzip the raw partition, but unpacking it to a smaller partition might cause problems. Anyone know if problems like that could be resolved by running CHKDSK or similar?

What wuld you do?

gparted clone ntfs gpt vmware-converter

1 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    I'd mount the filesystem and copy it at a file level rather than trying to disk image it. I suspect it'll end up being faster for you and you won't have to contend with disk partitioning issues.

    The built-in (at least in Windows Vista and newer) robocopy command can copy all the files, metadata, and ACLs pretty easily.

    You could use a Linux distro with GPT support and the ntfsprogs ntfsclone to close the filesytem.

    I wouldn't copy the filesystem raw at a block level, though. I'd have a hard time trusting it after doing that.

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