0

Another question addresses a scenario where truncate damages an image of a GPT drive. If I understand correctly, the advice there is to use gdisk to repair the damage. I would rather not cause the damage in the first place.

I have a Windows 10 installation on a 256GB USB GPT drive. I've used a Windows partitioner (MiniTool Partition Wizard) to squeeze the partitions down to a size that will fit onto a 128GB drive. This is what I want to image.

I can use Gnome Disks to create a 256GB raw image. But, as above, using truncate to reduce that to 128GB - to get rid of ~128GB of unallocated space at the end - will apparently damage the GPT partitioning.

As far as I can tell gdisk is looking for partitions to work with. I could convert the 128GB unallocated space into a partition, and then use gdisk to delete it - but won't that just return me to having 128GB unallocated on disk?

I guess I'm asking whether there's a truncate-like tool or technique for GPT.

Ray Woodcock
  • 340
  • 1
    After shrinking the partition(s): 1. Clone from the head end to the tail end of the last partition. Do it via an image file or directly to the target drive; 2. On the target drive: repair the GPT with gdisk or more user friendly with gpt-fix according to this link. Explanation: when the size is different, the backup gpt-table must be rewritten (to the tail end of the target drive). Allow a small margin, 1 MB is more than enough, from the tail end of the last partition to the tail end of the drive. – sudodus Oct 02 '23 at 11:47
  • 1
    (I don't know any single tool that can do the whole job for you, but would be happy to find one.) – sudodus Oct 02 '23 at 11:50

0 Answers0