I've resized my NTFS Vista C:\ partition using its builtin disk manager in order to free some space on my 250 GB HDD, Then I sucessfully installed Linux on a brand created Ext4 partition. Finally I've created an aditional NTFS partition to store data which I formated in Vista, ending up with this scheme:

sda1 (primary) Hidden (Recovery)
sda2 (primary) Vista C:\ (NTFS)
sda3 (primary) Linux \ (Ext4)
sda5 (extended) Swap Swap (Swap)
sda6 (extended) Data D:\ (NTFS)

Everything went smoothly in the first week, until I made some major security upgrades in Vista. Then, the next time I booted into Linux fsck yielded lots of errors about multiply-claimed blocks by inodes of some udev rule files. I've corrected all of them, still udev got corrupted to the point it wouldn't detect some of my hardware. Further, some Xorg binaries got corrupted in the process.

I've checked the RAM and HDD in my Asus laptop (only 3 months old) with memtest86 and badblocks and everything was fine. So, do you think it is possible that somehow the shrunk Vista partition is messing with the Linux partition thus corrupting it? Before I used Vista's disk manager to resize C:\ I did all the usual stuff like disabling shadow copies, hibernation, defrag...

I forgot to mention that I did a live resize. I shrunk C:\ while running the Vista inside it. It didn't yield any errors by the way. Also, The laptop had been running flawlessly for about 3 months prior to this resize.

graviton-boson:

"Ext4 partition corrupted by resized NTFS Vista C:\ partition?"

Answer:

No. Although vista and other windows cannot read linux partitions it respects the physical boundaries where it exists. At least, this is to my experience. (although I could err on this point also).

It could be that last upgrade in Vista; it could have initially meddled with mbr aspects of the ext4 partition that posed udev to uncertain resolve. Some aggressive microsoft upgrades make modifications on partition table as it sees fit, upon reboot it takes effect.

But I believe it was the forced fsck and your fixing that corrupted some binaries. This often happens: and it happened to me.

Recommendation if system backup to your Linux is not available:

Use the Vista to move important files on ext4 to your ntfs. Then reinstall Linux by reformatting the ext4 partition. This could save you much time and trouble. If possible do not reinstall linux OVER an existing file system without formatting, this will resurrect some undesirable defects.

Hope it helps.