Shrink exFAT partition

Solution 1:

The only tool I tested that can actually resize/extend an exFAT partition:

DiskGenius (ex Partition Guru) - v4.9.6.564 tested: Did the job, but not so geniously. It didn't understand my GPT partition layout (whole disk displayed as free). I had to rebuild the GPT with another tool that actually deleted my other linux partition. Be sure your disk manager sees all your partitions.

I got many errors that files had unallocated blocks after resizing, so I decided to reformat as NTFS.

All other "best partition manager" tools I tested at date (08/2018) DON'T SUPPORT exFAT resize/extend:

(Ubuntu) GParted v0.30 tested with exfat-fuse and exfat-utils: Not supported
EaseUS Partition Master v12.10: Not supported
AOMEI Partition Assistant Standard v7.0 tested: Not supported
MiniTool Partition Wizard Free v10.2.3 tested: Not supported (only Move, not Resize/Extend)
Paragon Partition Manager Free for Windows v16.5 Basic tested: Not supported (only Move, not Resize/Extend)
Active@ Partition Manager v6.0 tested: Not supported
Macronit Partition Expert v5.2.0 tested: Not supported
IM-Magic Partition Resizer v3.5.0 tested: Not supported (what a shame for a tool with that name and that announces exFAT support on their homepage!)
Tenorshare Partition Manager v2.0.0.1 tested: Not supported
Microsoft Disk Management v10.0.14393.0 tested: Not supported

I don't think there is any tool that can resize/extend exFAT on Linux at the moment.

Solution 2:

Yes.

The tool PartitionGuru Free is able to resize exFAT partitions - even doing a defrag when needed.

Solution 3:

I thought you could use gparted and a Linux distribution to do this. I was very wrong. It turns out that ExFAT is an evil, inappropriately named (because it, in fact, has nothing to do with FAT) technology that's heavily proprietary. IMHO, people should boycott any drive manufacturer who ships with it by default because you're basically being forced to pay Microsoft for the 'privilege' of having them make predatory use of IP law to destroy competitors.

And if you're going to be engaging in a transaction like that, they should be paying you to use such a drive.

Solution 4:

I'm not claiming to be an expert on this, and this is probably the first answer I've posted where I'm hoping I'm wrong... but I did find this:

Quora: How can I resize an exFat partition under Windows (or Mac), without losing data?

As far as I can tell this is not possible. Neither Mac or Windows' built-in disk partition utilities support this and I've not been able to find any external tools that do either.

(Quoted material is from 2012, so advances could have been made since then.)

To further respond to the comment made from SecurityMatt's answer, I don't think exFAT was really designed to be a very "modern" filesystem filled with modern design features. It was designed to be more modern than FAT32, by supporting larger partition sizes. It was basically Microsoft's answer to some limitation(s) that FAT had, and an opportunity for Microsoft to strengthen its claim on owning the intellectual property of a file format, by having a new file format created during a time when Microsoft has learned to be more clear about who owns the technology. I believe Microsoft intended to market exFAT for scenarios where low overhead is probably more desirable, such as little memory cards like SD cards (or, more applicably, either SDHC or SDXC cards). I don't believe exFAT was ever intended to be competing with NTFS by having lots of new/modern features.

Again, I haven't researched this as heavily as some other operating systems, and I could easily be out of date about some of the specifics. Hopefully some piece of this answer is somewhat helpful.

Solution 5:

Since it is not possible to resize it I solved it like this:

Backed up the files
Formatted to NTFS (using the Disk Manager)
Resized NTFS
Created new FAT32 Volume (since that was why I wanted to shrink it)
Formatted to exFat (on the Disk Manager)
Downloaded the files back into the HDD