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tudor -Reinstate Monica-
Asked: 2018-04-28 20:52:03 +0800 CST

gparted ntfs partition mountable but can't resize

  • 772

Trying to dual-boot install 18.04 on a machine with Windows 10 already installed. The installer didn't give me the option to shrink windows and dual-boot, so I went to manually repartition.

I tried to shrink the existing Windows 10 NTFS partition in gparted but there's an exclamation mark with a warning.

gparted showing exclamation mark next to ntfs partition

The warning says that it needs ntfs-3g installed, but it already is.

dialog showing information on partition with ntfs-3g error

gparted says its installed and can shrink.

gparted filesystem support showing ntfs-3g loaded and supporting shrink

I made sure that Windows had fast startup disabled and had been shut down properly.

I also ran chkdsk /f C: and rebooted and then shut down properly before trying again.

And to prove that it's able to load, I manually mounted the partition!

I also tried resizing with gnome-disks but it goes grey as though it's opening a dialog and freezes until I press alt-F4.

So, in summary:

  • ntfs-3g enabled
  • Windows fastboot disabled
  • chkdsk /f C: successful
  • Windows shut down properly (no hibernate)
  • partition mountable from Ubuntu

What else could be stopping it from being able to be shrunk?

dual-boot partitioning gparted ntfs 18.04

3 Answers

  1. Use Windows tools to shrink the Windows partition

    • I suggest that you boot into Windows, and use the tools available there to shrink the Windows partition.

    • Do not create any new partition (because Windows will probably create a dynamic partition, which cannot be used by linux). Instead you should leave unallocated drive space.

    • Boot into Ubuntu live and use gparted to create a partition or partitions, that can be used by Ubuntu.

    • 2

  2. It is possible that the file system is in an inconsistent state and this would prevent the file system from being resized. This commonly happens if Windows was not shutdown properly (e.g., powered off, or hibernated).

    The fix is to boot into Windows and perform a proper shutdown. Then boot from live media containing GParted (such as GParted Live) which should not mount any of the partitions. Then try the resize again.

    Further be sure that Windows Dynamic Disks are not being used as these are not supported.

    • 0

  3. It possible to run the live installation in trial mode before attempting to use gparted.

    then you can use a terminal to run ntfsfix /dev/sda4 to repair the ntfs partition.

    you can now use gparted to resize the partition and create a new one.

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