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I have 7 partitions in my single hardisk. One is NTFS where Windows 7 is installed, two are FAT partitions (bigger than all) for storing data files/movies/photos and rest all are ext4 which I use it as Linux partitions. All were OK till few days back when I decided to re-size one of the larger FAT partition to accommodate Linux swap.

I used GParted from Arch Linux to re-size FAT partition and at the end of process it did not show any error. I was able to access and still use the re-sized partition from Linux. However, when I boot from windows 7 and try to access the re-sized partition, it says the partition needs to be formatted before ready for use. I rebooted in to another Linux partition and tried to access files from re-sized partition and I was able to do so.

Also every time I try to open any program (especially explorer.exe), windows simply hangs and I have to hard power off the machine.

I used 'MiniTool Partition Wizard' to check if any bad sector exist. The tool was showing the re-sized parttiion and no bad sector was found on the partition.

Here is the output of sudo fdisk -l:-

Disk /dev/sda: 465.8 GiB, 500107862016 bytes, 976773168 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disklabel type: dos
Disk identifier: 0x00027bbf

Device     Boot     Start       End   Sectors   Size Id Type
/dev/sda1            2048 104859647 104857600    50G  7 HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
/dev/sda2       104859648 209717069 104857422    50G 83 Linux
/dev/sda3       209719294 976773119 767053826 365.8G  5 Extended
/dev/sda5  *    209719296 314576895 104857600    50G 83 Linux
/dev/sda6       314578944 346035975  31457032    15G 83 Linux
/dev/sda7       346038272 661405695 315367424 150.4G  b W95 FAT32
/dev/sda8       661407744 976773119 315365376 150.4G  b W95 FAT32

Any help to solve this issue is appreciated.

user1110945
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1 Answers1

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The code used in Linux, and Microsoft's code, have been known to be sufficiently different. For instance, Microsoft's FDISK has been known to wipe the first 512 bytes of a partition, completely unnecessarily, and be far more destructive than having Linux FDISK perform the same functionality.

It is entirely feasible to believe that PartEd may have done things that pass Linux's checks, but did not do everything the way that Microsoft expects to be done.

Robin Hood's answer suggests running Chkdsk on the newly shrunken drive. If that doesn't work, it seems entirely sensible to consider this to be a minor casualty of incompatibilities between GPartEd and Microsoft's code. The reason I call this a "minor" casualty is that this wound can still be relatively easy to heal: you can still access the data easily to be able to move it (even to another partition on the same physical drive, if there is sufficient space there) and, after being certain that your backup has been done sufficiently, delete the partition from within Microsoft Windows, and probably have no issues after remaking it.

TOOGAM
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