Here's my idea...

On my G drive GPT/NTFS as I write this. I have a 1.8TB partition with only 9%/170GB of which is being used. I was thinking I could shrink that partition down from it's current size down to 340GB. Which would leave me with 1.5XTB I could format in ext4 (for example, or whatever you think is best and put my Linux backups on the "H" partition; (where I would have a ton of room for that purpose...)

Thanks in advance,

Pen guin

Yes you can do this. However I wonder what you mean by G partition and H partition. These are Windows naming conventions. If this disk is in a Windows computer, I am not sure whether you can access the H partition formatted with ext4.

Linux can also write to an NTFS filesystem, by the way.

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Technically true, but I'm not sure it's a good idea to store Linux backups on that.

I am also confused by the apparent Windows terminology in something that seems to be about Linux.

Yeah, but not all permissions, ownership/group members and i.e. symbolic links can be stored on a NTFS file system. So you wind up with a broken Linux backup.
To correctly backup, you could do that to a .tar archive ON that partition, so that everything "linux-like" is stored within the tar file.

Good Call.

I've been using Windows since Windows 95 came out; so, it was a slip of the tongue due to conditioning.


I have a 4TB EXT HD. Currently divided into two Windows partitions. F, for my Win10 backups, and G, for Data, created under a Windows system.

Before I shrink G: from its current size of some 1.8 TB to 340 GB, would it be OK to have one partition G: NTFS, and a newly created partition say ext4? The theory being, I could tell Grsync to place my backups on the ext4 partition...(1.5x TB)

Thanks in advance,

Pen guin

I suppose you will connect the disk to a Linux computer to perform the backup? In this case, yes, no problem.

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Just to expand on my earlier post:

In addition to the F: and G: drives, (F: for my Acronis Win 10 "C" drive, and G: (Local Data) partition. And all of those backups go on F:.

LinuxMint is on /dev/nvme0n1p2 formatted as ext4...

Your tongue slipped again...
Seriously, the Windows nomenclature is confusing because it does not differentiate between physical drives and partitions. Try to avoid using it when explaining Linux things on a Linux forum.

Thanks for bringing that to my attention...

Apologies for the confusion.