Thank you for being a valued part of the CNET community. As of December 1, 2020, the forums are in read-only format. In early 2021, CNET Forums will no longer be available. We are grateful for the participation and advice you have provided to one another over the years.

Thanks,

CNET Support

General discussion

Partitioning problems on Seagate 500GB external hard drive

Aug 30, 2010 5:39AM PDT

I have a 500GB Seagate external hard drive (part number: 9CZ2A3-501) that I wish to partition to transfer about 6GB of files from my Windows 7 Home Premium laptop to my home built Ubuntu 10.04 desktop. However, whenever I try to shrink the 465GB (formatted) partition down 10GB to 455GB, in the Windows partitioning tool in Disk Management and other third party programs, I always get an error, and I cannot partition the drive. The Windows tool even took away 100GB of storage, which I had to gain back using Partition Wizard Home Edition. Using this program, I was going to try to shrink the volume and format as ext3. I know I have enough room; I am only using about 100-150GB for a system backup, with few other files on it, so I have about 300GB free space when formatted. I get an error (in Partition Wizard), something like 'not enough memory', and in Disk Management, something like not enough space to complete this.' Can you recommend what I could do to partition this drive? Or do you have a better (yet free) idea to transfer these files? Thanks.

Discussion is locked

- Collapse -
Why partition? Why not?
Aug 30, 2010 9:47AM PDT

Why not place these files in there own folder? I do this all the time with Ubuntu.

- Collapse -
I just kind of wanted to
Aug 30, 2010 10:11AM PDT

For sake of easiness. I thought that the drive, being formatted as NTFS, could only be read in Ubuntu (or any other GNU/Linux using a NTFS compatible kernel).I guess, however, even if this is true, it won't matter anyways since I won't be writing to the disk, anyways. Thanks.

- Collapse -
Sorry for the typo.
Aug 30, 2010 12:33PM PDT

And what's this about read only in Ubuntu? I read and write all the time to NTFS in Ubuntu (current version.)

- Collapse -
Really?
Aug 30, 2010 12:54PM PDT

And you don't have any third-party stuff to do this, or a custom compiled kernel? I had thought I read somewhere, I think on Wikipedia, that the GNU/Linux kernel had limited support for NTFS, only supporting reads at best. I'm probably wrong, though, since this will be my first shot at any GNU/Linux distro, or building a computer. Or maybe I read an outdated article from somewhere else. It certainly doesn't help when I'm all alone in the technological world, with only these forums and the Internet, not anyone to actually talk to. Once I'm finished my build, I'll just go ahead and try it, and post how it went. Thanks for the help and boost of confidence!

- Collapse -
Here's where I got my Ubuntu.
Aug 30, 2010 1:04PM PDT
http://www.ubuntu.com/

I don't think this is a custom build and right off the CD in it's live mode and even installed I am able to read and write to NTFS volumes.

What version are you using? I wrote current since I forgot the exact number but it is 10.04 from http://www.ubuntu.com/

And let me share I've used this boot CD in Live CD mode to read/write XP, Vista (32&64) and Windows 7 64 bit hard disks without any fuss.
Bob
- Collapse -
Ubuntu version
Aug 30, 2010 2:03PM PDT

I'd be using Ubuntu 10.04 (Lucid). And I believe I would have been reading a very outdated article somewheres online, since I read on Wikipedia that full support is available in the kernel, for some versions already, using the NTFS-3G driver, which should be included in most distros by default. Sorry for the confusion I may have created, which could have been prevented if I just researched more carefully. I just wanted to be sure, though, anyways. Thanks for the help.

Elljl

- Collapse -
No problem.
Aug 30, 2010 8:23PM PDT

Those old articles will continue to float around for years. The new distros seem fine with NTFS which is really helpful when some file won't delete in Windows and I don't feel like booting to the command prompt.
Bob