GParted - worst partitioning software ever?

[steven1350]

I am just about finished cleaning up the mess which GParted has unleased upon my system. What I had wanted to do was to trim 2GB off my windows XP partition and convert it into free space (to later merge with the linux partition). Big Mistake.

However, not all went as planned. I used GParted because I was too lazy to boot into windows. Assuming GParted was equally reliable as partition magic, I went ahead with it. Now I had expected this small trim to take no more then an hour, but once it was finished, it took well over 4 Hours to finish partition.

During the partiton process, I noticed that one of its steps said "coping files". Immiaditly after reading this, I was positive that something had to go wrong with windows XP (since coping a whole OS and all its data (including bootable sectors) was way to risky.

Since the partition took so long to complete, I called it a day adn went to sleep. The next morning, I went to confirm that windows had taken a harsh blow, and sure enough, it did. Windows didnt even boot. So I went to my windows recovery, re-installed the bootable sectors (not the mbr), and windows came back to life. But all was not well in the world of windows, because my user profile had corrupted, and refused to load. After recovering my data from another user account, I remade my user account and seem to got it back to the way I liked it.

All of this trouble, becasue GParted had to take the longest, riskiest method of resizing partitions. Needless to say, I will never use that program again.

 

[jp1203]

I installed a linux distro (can't remember which) and it ran very quick with GParted, but failed miserably at resizing my Network Serving and Windows partitions two times. I've never had it actually work right. Thank goodness for backups, I lost everything on the drive and ended up with 5 useable GBs out of 120. I won't use it again either until I hear something positive about it.

 

[saikee]

I happen to disagree.

The current version of Gparted is a lot reliable for resizing XP partitions.

The correct approach is to do one step at a time and defrag the XP partition first if possible.

I had a negative image of gparted before but was told by one of its ex-maintainers (in a forum) that a big advance has taken place in the last 12 to 18 months making it much more reliable.

I tried it out myself and have yet run into a problem. Users who followed my advice also confirmed satisfaction.

I recommend using the latest stable version directly from the site. There is an off shoot called Parted Magic using the same Gparted engine and is created by this ex-maintainer.

As Gaprted and Parted Magic has a Bash shell I have written a thread encouraging users to use such Live CD to migrate any XP, Vista, Linux, BSD and Solaris system to a "bigger" disk. The thread has on averaged receives 40 viewings per day since publication and I heard no adverse comment so far.

I wonder what version of Gparted was used when these troubles were reported. The version embedded inside the distos is usually older and I believe the break through in the ntfs-resizing routines is a recent development. I suppose Linux has tried to write on ntfs partitions for a few years and it is only the recent ntfs-3g that really does it and so the resizing success may be linked to this development.

Things are changing fast in Linux. When I installed Slax 6.0.0 it mounts every ntfs partition and allow me to do drag and drop files same as any fat or Ext2/3 partition. A user does not even need to know there is a software ntfs-3g behind.

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Not trying to defend Gparted but I suffer no ill effect from its applications and so feel obligated to speak out.

The post #10 of this thread changed my mind on Gparted after which I subsequently carried out various trails on win2k, xp and Vista partitions.

 

[Elvandil]

Gparted warns of possible problems with NTFS partitions and if the steps are followed, I never seem to have any problems with it. As saikee says, always use the most recent version.

The one thing that almost no one does before partitioning is to do a complete file system check with chkdsk or some other disk checker. Minor file system errors become very magnified if the file system is corrupted when the process begins. This is just as true of GParted as it is of Partition Magic or any other tool.

 

[steven1350]

I used the lastest version (downloadetd it right before I used it). No matter how you look at it, it did a terrible job, and I still won't use GParted ever again.

4H+ was ridiculus to take off two Gig's from a partition. Partition magic is much faster, and much safer. It doesn't re-write the entire partiton (which took almost 3 hours to do), which is why I am going to stick with that software. In my opinion, I would rate the two programs like this

Partition magic --> 8/10 (would be better if it supported more formats)
GParted --> 3/10 (dangerous, very time consuming,would be better if it supported more formarts)

 

[freebe]

I've use fdisk for windows many times. I have less than a yr w/ ubuntu linux.

I 1st had 5.10 breezy on an old small HD & windows on two 8gb partitions on a 60gb SATA HD.

I then installed 6.06 dapper & let it have the rest (~44gb) of the SATA HD.

Just over a month ago I installed 7.04 feisty, of course the CD didn't show any free space & offered to wipe & use the entire HD. I canceled out & used Gparted to cut bck the 40+gb for 6.06 to about 7gb. I was new to this & it took me several times of switiching between 7.04's CD install partitioning pgrm & Gparted to make 7.04 install in the remaining ~36gb.

So it's a triple boot. Win - 16gb, 6.06 - 7gb, & the default 7.04 - 36gb so I think I'm happy w/ Gparted. But that's one out of one.

 

[saikee]

One person's view and experience in using a software can be bad or good depending on how it is applied.

Had there been other results, say from at least one or two alternatives operating on the same condition, to compare with then the information would make the title more fitting.

I think the application here is only on resizing, which is a highly specialised activity, and there isn't a lot of software that can resize a XP partition and still make it bootable.

As a partitioning tool I am not too sure Gparted qualifies because it doesn't seem to do just partitioning alone but must go side by side with formatting as well. When we partition a hard disk we write a partition table only and that is the what "fdisk", "cfdisk" and sfdisk" are for. These programs operate at the hardware level and are available in the Bash shell of the Gparted Live CD. To format a partition we need the partition to be mounted first and operate it in the software level.

 

[RootbeaR]

One person's view and experience in using a software can be bad or good depending on how it is applied.

Had there been other results, say from at least one or two alternatives operating on the same condition, to compare with then the information would make the title more fitting.

I think the application here is only on resizing, which is a highly specialised activity, and there isn't a lot of software that can resize a XP partition and still make it bootable.

As a partitioning tool I am not too sure Gparted qualifies because it doesn't seem to do just partitioning alone but must go side by side with formatting as well. When we partition a hard disk we write a partition table only and that is the what "fdisk", "cfdisk" and sfdisk" are for. These programs operate at the hardware level and are available in the Bash shell of the Gparted Live CD. To format a partition we need the partition to be mounted first and operate it in the software level.

I've used G-Parted on 3 different computers, 2 98se', 1 Xp, all with 100% success. Created 5 partitions on XP computer.