GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 697848
Failure to Create 1 MiB NTFS Partition
Last modified: 2013-09-18 16:46:03 UTC
GParted thinks that a 1 MB partition is 1023 KB instead of 1024 KB when creating a 1 MB partition that's why there's an error saying that the partition is too small when creating a 1 MB partition.
Would you be able to provide the gparted_details.htm log file when this problem occurs? I tried to reproduce the problem you describe by creating a 1 MiB unformatted partition and GParted 0.15.0 created it for me with no problems.
This problem occurs when creating a 1 MB NTFS partition.
When creating a 1 MB NTFS partition an error occurs saying that the partition is not big enough?
With an NTFS file system, space is needed within the partition for the file system plus one extra sector at the end for the backup Partition Boot Record (PBR). See the notes regarding Total Sectors ( in the Volume ) at offset 28h in: An Examination of the NTFS Volume Boot Record http://thestarman.pcministry.com/asm/mbr/NTFSBR.htm Hence it appears from practice that a 1 MiB NTFS file system actually requires 1 MiB + 1 sector. With MiB alignment in GParted, 2 MiB would be needed to meet this requirement. A note in the Microsoft TechNet recommends a minimum volume size of 10 MB for an NTFS partition. See NTFS compared to FAT and FAT32: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc779002%28WS.10%29.aspx Since the minimum allocatable unit in GParted is 1 MiB, I think the best way to address this problem is to increase the minimum size for NTFS in GParted to 2 MiB. That way people who would like to create partitions smaller than 10 MB can still do so.
Moving this report to component application from livecd.
Rename title from "1 MB Partition" to "Failure to create 1 MiB NTFS Partition"
Created attachment 245668 [details] [review] Set NTFS minimum partitoin size to 2 MiB patch The attached patch sets the NTFS minimum partition size to 2 MiB.
Hi Curtis, Curiously creating a 2 MiB NTFS partition and resizing it down to 1 MiB succeeds. Also the Resize/Move dialog sets the new size to the minimum size (reasonable) but if that is larger than the current size it doesn't enable the Resize/Move button. Can't decide whether to raise a separate bug or just sweep it under the carpet as it's a very unlikely case for GParted to come across any file system smaller than it thinks is the minimum size for it. Anyway I've tested your fix and it's works fine. Thanks, Mike Patch fixing this bug report has been committed to GParted GIT repository and can be found here: Set NTFS minimum partition size to 2 MiB (#697848) https://git.gnome.org/browse/gparted/commit/?id=8ed7155e6d447da8c2f8af95c81bf2e116750ece
Hi Mike, > Curiously creating a 2 MiB NTFS partition and resizing it down to 1 MiB > succeeds. Confirmed. This is curious behaviour indeed. > Also the Resize/Move dialog sets the new size to the minimum size > (reasonable) but if that is larger than the current size it doesn't > enable the Resize/Move button. Can't decide whether to raise a separate > bug or just sweep it under the carpet as it's a very unlikely case for > GParted to come across any file system smaller than it thinks is the > minimum size for it. I am having difficulty understanding this. Would you be able to describe this another way? I created a 2 MiB ntfs partition, shrunk it to 1 MiB (using code prior to this patch), and then selected the Resize/Move dialog. The partition is shown as 1 MiB. When I increase the size to 2 MiB using the spin-button arrow, the Resize/Move button is enabled. Or are you talking about the following bug report? Bug #583888 - Resize/move dialog does not unfade 'Resize' button when size entered using keyboard
(In reply to comment #9) > I am having difficulty understanding this. Would you be able to describe this > another way? 1) Create your 1 MiB ntfs with the old code as described above in comment #8. 2) Using the new code open Resize/Move dialog. Minimum size has been automatically increased from 1 MiB to 2 MiB but the Resize/Move dialog button is disabled.
Thank you Mike for the steps in comment #10 to reproduce the situation. Now I see what you were talking about. With so many more important bugs and enhancements to implement, and with the small likelihood of this situation occurring, I too lean towards ignoring this anomaly for now.
It seems that this is a bug in mkntfs. It claims the minimum size is 1024k and the device is only 1023k, when it is in fact, 1024k. I have reported this to the ntfs-3g dev list, so I think this can now be closed as NOTGNOME.
The patch to address this report has been included in GParted 0.16.2 released on September 18, 2013.