Partition question
Hi all, Got a quick question about partitioning. I have a laptop that has XP and Linux 9.0. I need to resize the SuSE partition and make it smaller and the XP larger (giving it to my wife). What's the easiest way to do this? Partition Magic or use SuSE? Thanks, Tom -- Tom Nielsen Neuro Logic Systems 1.805.389.5435 x18 www.neuro-logic.com
On Wednesday 22 December 2004 11:47 am, Tom Nielsen wrote:
Hi all,
Got a quick question about partitioning. I have a laptop that has XP and Linux 9.0. I need to resize the SuSE partition and make it smaller and the XP larger (giving it to my wife). What's the easiest way to do this? Partition Magic or use SuSE?
I've used PM 8.0 and parted. Parted never failed me. PM 8.0 has on occassion render a partition (and once a whole disk) useless. Maybe it was something I did wrong, I'm no expert, but the the PM cd has worked its way toward the bottom of the seldom used cd stack. The only file systems I have worked with are ext3 and fat. Unless something has changed, you can shrink an ext3(2) partition, but you can't move the start. PM didn't warn me of that, parted did. If you use reiserfs, I don't know if you can move the start of the partition or not. I don't think PM 8.0 supported it... maybe a later version? Good luck Doug
On Wednesday 22 December 2004 10:13 am, Doug B wrote:
On Wednesday 22 December 2004 11:47 am, Tom Nielsen wrote:
Hi all,
Got a quick question about partitioning. I have a laptop that has XP and Linux 9.0. I need to resize the SuSE partition and make it smaller and the XP larger (giving it to my wife). What's the easiest way to do this? Partition Magic or use SuSE?
I've used PM 8.0 and parted.
Parted never failed me. PM 8.0 has on occassion render a partition (and once a whole disk) useless. Maybe it was something I did wrong, I'm no expert, but the the PM cd has worked its way toward the bottom of the seldom used cd stack.
The only file systems I have worked with are ext3 and fat. Unless something has changed, you can shrink an ext3(2) partition, but you can't move the start. PM didn't warn me of that, parted did.
If you use reiserfs, I don't know if you can move the start of the partition or not. I don't think PM 8.0 supported it... maybe a later version?
Good luck Doug Thanks for the info Doug! -- Tom Nielsen Neuro Logic Systems 1.805.389.5435 x18 www.neuro-logic.com
On Wed, 22 Dec 2004, Doug B wrote:
On Wednesday 22 December 2004 11:47 am, Tom Nielsen wrote:
Hi all,
Got a quick question about partitioning. I have a laptop that has XP and Linux 9.0. I need to resize the SuSE partition and make it smaller and the XP larger (giving it to my wife). What's the easiest way to do this? Partition Magic or use SuSE?
I've used PM 8.0 and parted.
Parted never failed me. PM 8.0 has on occassion render a partition (and once a whole disk) useless. Maybe it was something I did wrong, I'm no expert, but the the PM cd has worked its way toward the bottom of the seldom used cd stack.
The only file systems I have worked with are ext3 and fat. Unless something has changed, you can shrink an ext3(2) partition, but you can't move the start. PM didn't warn me of that, parted did.
If you use reiserfs, I don't know if you can move the start of the partition or not. I don't think PM 8.0 supported it... maybe a later version?
I've had problems with parted on both NTFS and FAT if the file system is heavily fragmented. At that stage PM works better, while parted just gets stuck at some point. Of course, if you have Windows available a defrag might solve the problem for parted. Bjørn -- Bjørn Tore Sund Phone: (+47) 555-84894 Stupidity is like a System administrator Fax: (+47) 555-89672 fractal; universal and Math. Department Mobile: (+47) 918 68075 infinitely repetitive. University of Bergen VIP: 81724 Support: system@mi.uib.no Contact: teknisk@mi.uib.no Direct: bjornts@mi.uib.no
Tom Nielsen wrote:
Got a quick question about partitioning. I have a laptop that has XP and Linux 9.0. I need to resize the SuSE partition and make it smaller and the XP larger (giving it to my wife). What's the easiest way to do this? Partition Magic or use SuSE?
Have not used parted but have used PM and Acronis PE and much prefer the latter. All Acronis products are very well done. I use their Image Server almost daily. Beats Ghost all to heck, perfectly images anything, windows, *NIX, mac perfectly, and you never have to boot into Dos. Have even developed backup strategies with it to backup servers offsite to an image 1/3 the size at 10 times the speed of windoze native backup. Problem open files like SQL databases are also not a problem. Of course, if it is a busy database, I suppose you could lose a transaction since it is not touted as a database backup, but I have never had a problem. Curt Purdy CISSP, GSEC, CNE, MCSE+I, CCDA Information Security Engineer DP Solutions ----------------------------- If you spend more on coffee than on IT security, you will be hacked. What's more, you deserve to be hacked. -- former White House cybersecurity czar Richard Clarke
Thanks to all for your help and suggestions. Here's what I ended up doing. I installed PM to see what it looked like and how it worked. While using it I found that I had 26gb of space that was unallocated by either OS (XP or SuSE). Fearing PM didn't read it right, I booted into SuSE and took a look. Sure enough, the village idiot here forgot to allocate 26gb of space between XP and SuSE on the disk. Feeling stupid, I booted back into XP, ran defrag then using PM, slid the remaining space over to XP format. Within 5 seconds I was done. Booted into both OS's and everything was fine. Now, if that space was allocated to SuSE, then I'm sure I would have had some issues. But, since I screwed up initially, it saved me in the end. :-) Thanks to all for the help! Tom On Wednesday 22 December 2004 09:47 am, Tom Nielsen wrote:
Hi all,
Got a quick question about partitioning. I have a laptop that has XP and Linux 9.0. I need to resize the SuSE partition and make it smaller and the XP larger (giving it to my wife). What's the easiest way to do this? Partition Magic or use SuSE?
Thanks, Tom -- Tom Nielsen Neuro Logic Systems 1.805.389.5435 x18 www.neuro-logic.com
-- ---------------------------- Tom Nielsen Neuro Logic Systems, Inc. 805.389.5435 x18 www.neuro-logic.com ----------------------------
participants (4)
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Bjorn Tore Sund -
Curt Purdy -
Doug B -
Tom Nielsen