Windows – ntfsresize says NTFS partition inconsistent but chkdsk doesn’t find anything

chkdskgpartedntfsresizepartitioningwindows 10

I am trying to shrink a NTFS partition on which, currently, Win10 is installed. The hard disk is a SSD. Disk management utility is not allowing me to shrink even a bit. It shows the amount of shrink available is 0 MB.

I understand from the output that due to immovable objects of Windows at the end of my partition, I cannot shrink further. I went through the following question and tried everything to get rid of immovable objects in my partition.

How to shrink Windows 7 boot partition with unmovable files

I disabled pagefile, hibernation, and system restore. I even deleted temporary files and ran disk fragmentation multiple times but this utility doesn't allow me to shrink.

I have an installation of Ubuntu 14.04 on my second hard disk (HDD). I gave up on Disk Management tool and thought of giving GParted software a try. I ran it inside that Ubuntu. Unfortunately, it is also not allowing me to shrink. GParted gives the following warning:

Unable to read the contents of this file system!
Because of this some operations may be unavailable.
The cause might be a missing software package.
The following list of software packages is required for ntfs file
system support:  ntfsprogs / ntfs-3g.

It seems that GParted is missing some package so I installed the ntfs-3g (which contains ntfsprogs), but this also did not help remove the error. I tried

ntfsfix /dev/sda4

It could not identify any issues. So, I referenced to following thread http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1244058, and ran the command

sudo ntfsresize --info --force --no-progress-bar /dev/sda4

It showed the following output:

ntfsresize v2013.1.13AR.1 (libntfs-3g)
Device name        : /dev/sda4
NTFS volume version: 3.1
Cluster size       : 4096 bytes
Current volume size: 248417088000 bytes (248418 MB)
Current device size: 248417091584 bytes (248418 MB)
Checking filesystem consistency ...
Accounting clusters ...
Cluster accounting failed at 8553265 (0x828331): extra cluster in $Bitmap
Cluster accounting failed at 8553266 (0x828332): extra cluster in $Bitmap
Cluster accounting failed at 8553267 (0x828333): extra cluster in $Bitmap
Cluster accounting failed at 8553268 (0x828334): extra cluster in $Bitmap
Cluster accounting failed at 8553269 (0x828335): extra cluster in $Bitmap
Cluster accounting failed at 8553270 (0x828336): extra cluster in $Bitmap
Cluster accounting failed at 8553271 (0x828337): extra cluster in $Bitmap
Cluster accounting failed at 8553272 (0x828338): extra cluster in $Bitmap
Cluster accounting failed at 8553273 (0x828339): extra cluster in $Bitmap
Cluster accounting failed at 8553274 (0x82833a): extra cluster in $Bitmap
Filesystem check failed! Totally 2878 cluster accounting mismatches.
ERROR: NTFS is inconsistent. Run chkdsk /f on Windows then reboot it TWICE!
The usage of the /f parameter is very IMPORTANT! No modification was
and will be made to NTFS by this software until it gets repaired.

So, I went to Windows back and ran

chkdsk /f /r

and rebooted twice hoping that problem would have been resolved. chkdsk does not find any problem. I also checked for any errors using the "check" option under "Error checking" section of Properties of my partition. Nothing helped. ntfsresize still considers my NTFS partition as inconsistent. I don't know what to do next. I just want to shrink my NTFS partition and install another OS on it. Also, I want to avoid deleting the partition altogether. Any sort of help will be appreciated.

Best Answer

I was having the identical problem. The problem seems to be that it's necessary to specify which disk to check:

chkdsk C: /f /r

This fixed the problem. Or possibly it was the fact that I had also tried other arguments such as

chkdsk C: /scan
chkdsk C: /spotfix

which successfully ran without rebooting. Use

help chkdsk

to see other options.