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I want to carve out some of the unused space on the Windows partition of my computer for other use. After defragmenting the free space, there are unmoveable files roughly in the middle of the partition. For now, I plan to just shrink the partition to where those files end.
Objective: I need to make an image backup of the Windows partition first as catastrophe insurance.
Problem: From everything I've read, restoring an image backup must be done into a space at least as big as what was copied. Since I'll be shrinking the partition, that won't be possible. I'm looking for a way to either make an image of just the portion ending with the unmoveable files, or restore a full image (mostly empty space), into the shrunken partition.
Questions:
Is there a way to do either using a Linux command, like
dd
, or any of the usual built-in or readily available Linux or Windows system tools (my Google-fu hasn't come up with a solution)?If creating a partial image is possible, I assume I will need to specify something like a sector range. How do I determine what that is (I don't know what the unmoveable files are, their exact location, or how to determine this)?
UPDATE: It looks like Acronis can actually restore an image to a smaller partition (although it is expensive and complex, so not ideal).
Not sure whether it's exactly what you're looking for, but Acronis can restore a backup to any partition larger than the data size. I've used it for cloning to smaller SSDs etc with no issues at all, & no pre-prep; didn't have to try shrink the partition to match first. – Tetsujin – 2015-01-18T07:44:42.643
If I understand what you're describing, I think I've got the opposite problem. My issue is that restoring would be to a smaller partition. From everything I've read, nothing will restore to a smaller partition, even if all of the "extra" content is empty space. So I'm trying to create an image of only the portion of the partition that will be there after shrinkage (around half). Seems like it ought to be a common situation that should have existing solutions, but I can't find anything. – fixer1234 – 2015-01-18T07:56:30.020
I don't want to come across like some kind of advert for acronis;) but I've done precisely that on many occasions, e.g. 2TB HD to 512GB SSD, without having to take unmoveable system files into consideration. I've done it both by cloning & by backup/restore. There's also an add-on [which I'm not sure you'd need for this task] that will allow you to clone to disparate hardware too, bare-metal. Best I could find as ref is a bit out of date, but - https://kb.acronis.com/content/2770
– Tetsujin – 2015-01-18T08:02:16.603Way cool! That looks like a solution, and a lot simpler than I thought it would take. Can you write it up as an answer? Quick question, will that run on Linux (or run on Windows but handle Linux files systems)? – fixer1234 – 2015-01-18T08:49:02.507
Sure - I'll try to make it not look like an advert ;) – Tetsujin – 2015-01-18T08:53:36.317