how to check if gparted livecd is still doing something?
 

I am shrinking my NTFS partition so I can use the unallocated space afterwards to install Slackware. It is a 160GB drive, only ~30% of which is in use, and I only wanted to free 15GB at the end of the drive.

So far its been at least 2 hours still doing the "real resize" of "shrink filesystem" (ntfsresize).

How can I make sure it's still resizing, and not hung? I tried to run top and ps, but neither are available on the livecd. When should I give up and tell gparted to cancel the command? I can't let it run like this forever.

I have never figured that out.

When I was unable to defrag the NTFS from inside Windows (badly virus infected Windows system, so I was installing Linux in order to use the computer while more safely salvaging data files from sick system) I was almost ready to cancel the resize operation after it ran 2 hours without a hint that it was still making progress. Then it suddenly finished.

On a different computer, when I didn't yet know I ought to defrag first from inside Windows, I let a resize run for over 24 hours before canceling it, because I thought canceling it would leave a trashed partition. There was no harm done to the partition. I don't actually know why there was no harm. Then I booted Windows, defraged, also got rid of the pagefile. Then resizing went fast.

On that system, I wanted to dual boot, so later I put the pagefile back. Even so, it is safer and faster to kill the pagefile before resizing and put it back after than to leave it intact throughout.

In the Mepis liveCD, it is pretty easy to mount the NTFS partition, delete various files such as Windows C:/pagefile.sys then dismount it and resize. I don't know if your CD supports all that. Depending on your level of comfort with each system, such cleanups may be easier in Windows (unless it is so virus infected as to take away that option).

If you do cancel the resize, delete things like pagefile.sys, then defragment from inside windows, then try the resize again and you'll be much happier with the results.

Ohhh. Thank you for your post, john. You made me realise what the culprit probably is in my case. I use third-party defragging software in Windows, Defraggler, and I have it configured to move large files to the end of the drive. Right now, instead of resizing empty space, gparted is moving all those large files to the left.

This makes me feel alot better about just letting it continue, although next time I'll be sure to defrag Windows the normal way beforehand. :)