Last Updated on November 29, 2010 by Dave Farquhar
So, I’ve got these Windows 2000 boxes that didn’t have enough space, so I resized some partitions. No error messages, no problems. I reboot, and the drives still show their old size, even though in Disk Administrator they show the right size.
What gives? Microsoft acknowledges this issue in Windows XP, but hasn’t released a fix yet. But these aren’t XP, they’re 2000.
I’ve got a crazy solution.
If you have a copy of Ghost by Symantec, take a Ghost image of the partition that’s sized wrong. Then, immediately after creating the image, write the image back to the partition you just Ghosted.
Makes no sense, right? Well, but Ghost doesn’t do a bit-by-bit copy. It makes sure it gets good copies of your files, but it saves an interpretation of the partition, rather than the partition itself. So when it writes it back, minor errors that were there before get wiped out.
Now, why there can’t be a disk utility that does this same thing to a partition without the imaging runaround, I don’t know.
I just know I’ve brought a lot of computers with weird disk problems back to life over the years by making Ghost images of them and then writing the image back. This one today is just the latest in that long line.
David Farquhar is a computer security professional, entrepreneur, and author. He started his career as a part-time computer technician in 1994, worked his way up to system administrator by 1997, and has specialized in vulnerability management since 2013. He invests in real estate on the side and his hobbies include O gauge trains, baseball cards, and retro computers and video games. A University of Missouri graduate, he holds CISSP and Security+ certifications. He lives in St. Louis with his family.