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Is there a sector-precise partition manager that can resize an NTFS partition? Accepting Windows software and Live CDs.

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  • The default cluster size of NTFS is 4KB - setting a size on sector-precision therefore would require to have an NTFS file-system with custom cluster size of 512 bytes (don't know if this is possible - I only know larger block sizes).
    – Robert
    Commented Dec 13, 2011 at 13:18
  • Physical sectors on new hard drives are 4KB, and erase blocks on SSDs are larger. Partitions should be aligned to those sizes. Windows' default 1MB partition alignment is a good compromise since it's a multiple of any sector or block size that a storage device is likely to use, but still rather small compared to the capacity of a modern storage device.
    – Wyzard
    Commented Dec 13, 2011 at 13:44
  • @Wyzard: Thankfully I am using an old drive (physical 512 sectors).
    – kinokijuf
    Commented Dec 14, 2011 at 21:01

1 Answer 1

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Not so sure about "sectors," but ntfsresize from ntfs-3g lets you resize NTFS filesystems to kibibyte precision, which usually corresponds to two "sectors". Most *NIX partition tools, including fdisk, parted and cfdisk lets you resize the partition to increments of 512 bytes, corresponding to one "sector."

All, or a subset, of the above are available on most Linux live disks, I myself prefer the Gentoo live disks, available here.

Check the corresponding man pages for instructions to the individual programs.

PS: Apparently the native windows partitioning software (diskpart) only allows MiB precision.

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