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I have a 1TB external hard drive with only one NTFS partition. Now, as I'd like to store some files from Linux, and I'd like to preserve file attributes such as the permissions, I want to shrink the partition I have on that drive. I tried with GParted on Linux, but it fails to do so. So I tried to use the Windows "Disk Management" utility. The problem is that the utility can only shrink the current partition of 81MB. I tried to check the disk for errors and to run a defrag on that, but the result stays the same: I cannot shrink the partition of more than 81MB. Now, I did a quick search on the internet and I found out this problem could be generated by fixed files (such as the hibernation or page files), but, of course, being the hard drive an external one, it has no such files, hasn't it?

Now, is there a way to shrink the partition beyond the 81MB point without moving all my files to another disk, reformat the external HD and then move the backup back in the disk?

Thanks a lot.

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  • How exactly does GParted fail? Anyway, you should have backups of this data if it's important, especially if you're messing with partitions. Drives fail, so if you can't afford losing this data, make backups. And if you don't, be prepared to lose them, either to a hardware or software failure.
    – gronostaj
    Commented Feb 17, 2020 at 10:38

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Windows does not support multiple partitions on external disks, so the second partition needs to be created in Linux.

You should resize the Windows partition only through Windows. If it refuses to reduce the size, search for hidden or system files or folders that are invisible by default in Explorer.

If you are trying to create a minuscule partition, NTFS is not the best solution, as it was created to support larger disks. FAT32 would be a better solution.

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  • I just wanted to resize the current partition in order to have ~250GB for an ext4 formatted partition and ~750GB for the NTFS formatted partition. I did not succeed into doing that with Windows, so I backed everything up in other disks and formatted the entire drive. I am aware that Windows does not handle multiple partition on external disks, but Linux does it magnificently and Windows properly reads the NTFS partition I created.
    – LuxGiammi
    Commented Feb 20, 2020 at 21:03

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