need advice

[HaMBoNE]

I installed Gentoo on my Windoze box a few months ago. At the time, I only gave it 6.5 GB of disk space because I wasn't sure if I was going to keep it (I was still experimenting with it and learning it). Now I think Gentoo is the best thing since sliced bread, so I want to resize the partition to about 15GB. I have 2 HDs in the Windoze box...a 10GB master and a 40GB slave. Right now Gentoo is installed on the 40GB drive at the end of the disk. It is broken up into 3 partitions...a 100MB ext3 /boot, a 250MB swap, and about a 6.4 GB ext3 /. I want to move everything towards the middle of the 40GB drive and then resize the root partition to about 15GB. The only problem is I have no idea where to start.

I have qtparted installed (graphical frontend for parted), but I'm afraid that if I move the partition I"m going to screw everything up and won't be able to boot Gentoo. Does anyone have any suggestions on how to go about doing this?

[Phant0m51]

You could try Partition Magic 8 for Windows. The trial only ACTS like it will do what you want it too though. You'll have to buy it, or borrow it from a friend or something (Remember, Software piracy is illegal!)

I don't know what to tell you about the qtparted, I've never used it.

[arkhan_jg]

How you proceed rather depends on what partition type your other partitions are (on the master, and the first part slave).
If it's FAT32, you have several options.

if they're NTFS, then the only practical option I can think of is to beg, borrow or buy another ide drive from somewhere ** (linux can't do ntfs writes safely), and use dd (dd if=/dev/hdb2 of=/dev/hdc1 etc) to copy the partitions to the new drive. You should be able to use the livecd for this, as you wouldn't want to have the partitions in use while you copy them; I suppose it can be done in single user mode, I've never tried it myself.

If on the other hand, you have a fat32 partitition with space to spare, you could simply boot off a suitable boot CD (see below), create and mount some temporary directories, then cp -a your /boot and / partitions to those temporary directories.

Last I checked, the livecd doesn't have vfat support, (which you need for fat32 access) so i'd use a knoppix cd; always handy for rescue situations! you could use boot floppies, but very few support vfat; none come to mind instantly.



However you copy your files out, you'll need to resize your presumably windows partition on the 40gb drive; again, your options depends upon it's file system. I've only ever used partition magic to resize ntfs partitions, it works a treat on fat32 partitions too; but then it's a commercial piece of software.

I don't know of any free (linux or windows) software that can resize ntfs partitions off the top of my head, though parted should work nicely on a fat32 partition.

anyway, assuming you successfully resize the windows partition on the 40gig drive, all you have to do then is delete and recreate your linux partitions at their new size, and copy the data back the same way you backed it up.


If you're feeling brave, just copy out your essential data files (to cd, network drive, spare drive etc) and resize/move away. In theory, the resizing is non-destructive.

Just don't try partition magic on any other linux partition than an ext2/3, i've had it do nasty things to other types of partition, and i've not had a 100% success rate with ext2 either.

Personally, I always get a full backup of data before i play with partitions; murphy's law dictates it'll always go tits up when you don't have one, ranging from power failures, to flakey drives, to simple crashes. On the other hand, whenever I have a good backup, everything goes smoothly and without problems - well, almost always, anyway




**(Hmm, I've just thought of another option; if you had a copy of partition magic, you could resize the ntfs partition first, more than necessary, to leave EXTRA blank space on the drive; create a new, temporary partition in that space, backup your gentoo, delete your original gentoo, make new gentoo partitions at the required size, copy your data back, delete the temporary partition, and resize the ntfs partition up to fill that that space! phew!)
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[myrddian]

There is an NTFS resizing program around however I forgot the name, you have to be in linux to use it. Which works fine since you'd be in linux any way ^_^


I am also having the same problem, ableit I have PM 8, however I am still wondering wether I should extend the linux part or just convert to FAT32 and mount them in somewhere /usr/local or /mnt/windows

The only thing I want them for is to get access to my games XD

[arkhan_jg]

You're dead right -
http://mlf.linux.rulez.org/mlf/ezaz/ntfsresize.html

looks like it should do the trick, AND it can be combined with qtparted. I knew one of the main distros had non-destructive ntfs resize, i just couldn't remember which one, thought it was a commercial package.

Therefore, this should be useable in replacement where I suggested partition magic; however I've not used it myself, so I canot vouch for it's efficacy - though saying that, it should work fine.
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make menuconfig not war

[arkhan_jg]

[HaMBoNE]

Ok, I'm going to give it a shot. I'm backing everything up and putting it on my RH Linux box just in case.