partition outside disk

[Ryan Underwood]

I recently had to copy a FAT32 filesystem on a large disk to a
not-so-large disk.  I used dd_rescue to copy sectors up to the limit of
the not-so-large disk (truncating the rest of the filesystem).  I then
figured I'd be able to use parted to adjust the CHS values in the
partition table and FAT boot sector.  Unfortunately, parted only
complained that the partition was outside the disk, and rendered no
help at all; I couldn't even "p"rint the partition table. So, I located
a copy of Partitionmagic, which did the job in this particular instance.

I know this is a bad idea in general, but FAT doesn't really put
anything above the "high water mark" of the filesystem, so the end of
the disk is usually safely truncatable unless things are really
fragmented.  I've done this many times when rescuing disks and never had
a problem that couldn't be attributed to the failing source disk.

Is there a way to accomplish what I was attempting?  It sure would have
been convenient.

Thanks!

-- 
Ryan Underwood, <address@hidden>

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