# Reducing an NTFS partition



## balanga (Oct 9, 2014)

I'd like to install FreeBSD on a disk which has Windows installed although the NTFS partition on the disk has 50GB of free space. 

Can I reduce the size of the partition whilst trying to install FreeBSD?  If so how? Or do I need an external utility like `gparted`?


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## wblock@ (Oct 9, 2014)

sysutils/fusefs-ntfs has `ntfsclone`, which can resize NTFS filesystems.  That might be what gparted uses.  I have not tried resizing in-place with it.  Even the Windows programs sometimes fail at that.


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## MorgothV8 (Oct 9, 2014)

Did that many times in the past. Using Partition Magic. It was in the FreeBSD 4.0-4.5 era.


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## SirDice (Oct 9, 2014)

Not sure if Windows 7 has it but my Windows 8.1 has the option "Shrink Volume" in the Windows Disk Management. So there wouldn't be a need for a third party application. Never used it myself though.


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## Juanitou (Oct 9, 2014)

SirDice said:
			
		

> Not sure if Windows 7 has it but my Windows 8.1 has the option "Shrink Volume" in the Windows Disk Management. So there wouldn't be a need for a third party application. Never used it myself though.


I’ve used it on a Windows Vista laptop to dual-boot PC-BSD and it worked without issues.


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