We have an iSCSI target provided by a CentOS server attached to a Windows Server 2003 Standard box, formatted in NTFS.
My question is this – I know we can resize the backend block device fine (LVM et al.), however how do you tell Windows the NTFS filesystem has shrunk afterwards? [note we want to shrink].
I'm imagining a world of pain if it's not done correctly!
This is a production box, so ideally we'd like the process to keep the drive mounted and online during the process, but downtime can be scheduled if need be.
90% of what I've found on the subject so far basically involves using the 'ntfsresize' command in Linux to do the job — but surely Windows can do this itself?
Cheers!
UPDATE: thanks for the replies but live bootable CDs are a daft idea. The drive is mounted over iSCSI from a Linux box – so if I needed to use gparted/ntfsresize/etc I could just unmount the iscsi target, mount the block device locally on the Linux SAN and resize. Also are people sure a gparted bootdisk would even see an iSCSI target?
I was really hoping I had underestimated Windows – but it seems not!
Best Answer
In VMware land I believe this is done automatically in the latest versions, but the way you're doing it you're going to have to use a tool like GParted (bootable ISO) or Acronis Disk Director to resize the partition (also bootable). As always, take a full backup first, your mileage may vary.