Hi, Amit Uttamchandani wrote: > On Thu, Feb 27, 2014 at 08:20:15AM +0100, Jean-Pierre André wrote: >> Amit Uttamchandani wrote: >>> With the latest NTFS-3G release (2014.2.15), I noticed improvements to >>> shrinking NTFS volumes. >>> >>> I was curious as to how this works if I would like to clone a 2TB drive >>> to a 250GB drive. In this case, the NTFS file system on the 2TB drive is >>> mostly empty (used space of about 50GB). So there is more than enough >>> room to fit on 250GB drive. >> >> Did you try such a shrinking ? >> >> The improvement is only about the existing MFT being outside >> the shrunk space, and this is a rare condition (fragmented MFT). >> >> Regards >> >> Jean-Pierre >> > Hello, > > I have not tried this yet. But I was curious as to how this works? For > example: > > 1. 2TB drive formatted NTFS. > 2. Used space is 75GB. > 3. Filesystem is heavily fragmented and some clusters are located at the > end of disk or close to end. > > First of all is the above case possible? If so, then how does the > cloning/resize work to a 250GB drive? What happens to the backup MFT? > Isn't that located in the middle of the 2TB drive?
Oh, I did not realize you meant resizing and cloning to another drive in a single step... It might be simpler to just copy the files. When resizing in place, any data located beyond the target size is relocated, including metadata. There is nothing special to do for the backup MFT. > Looking at the man pages for both the utilities, it seems that I have to > use ntfsclone to an image and then shrink the fs on that image and then > place in the 250GB drive. Currently you have to do the resizing in place, and in your situation you have to clone to a sparse file. You will need double space in the sparse file, as it will contain both the original data and the relocated one. Resizing will not improve the fragmentation. Note : resizing a sparse file implies filling holes, which is slow in current stable versions, but has been improved in ntfs-3g-2013.1.13AR.4 Regards Jean-Pierre ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Flow-based real-time traffic analytics software. Cisco certified tool. Monitor traffic, SLAs, QoS, Medianet, WAAS etc. with NetFlow Analyzer Customize your own dashboards, set traffic alerts and generate reports. Network behavioral analysis & security monitoring. All-in-one tool. http://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/clk?id=126839071&iu=/4140/ostg.clktrk _______________________________________________ ntfs-3g-devel mailing list [email protected] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/ntfs-3g-devel
