Partitioning: What's safe and what's not?

sunpascal · 02-10-2006, 03:55 AM

Hi,

I don't want to takes risks, so I thought I'd ask first.
Is it safe to change the size of a linux ext3 partition?
I have following setup:

/dev/hda
WindowsXP ntfs: 8G
Linux ext3 30 GB
Swap 700 MB.

I would like to increase my swap file, and decrease the size of my ext3 partition for that. Is that even possible?
How do I check my file system? I got messages to do that before messing with the partitions.

-sunpascal

titanium_geek · 02-10-2006, 04:02 AM

Anything is possible. However- BACKUP. BACKUP. BACKUP!!!!!

try resizing it- you never learn anything unless you step out and try it.

if everything is BACKED UP then try resizing it- if it's not full then you will basically just decrease the empty space. Linux ext3 doesn't fragment, so you don't need to defrag like you do with windows.

Again, I hope you remember that before you mess with stuff to BACK UP.

titanium_geek

PS: BACKUP!!!

sunpascal · 02-10-2006, 04:13 AM

ALright, so there is no rules of thumb to what can and cannot done.
And ok, I will backup my stuff.

syg00 · 02-10-2006, 05:04 AM

The resizing is (supposedly) supported - I've never gotten it to work satisfactorally. I always just backup (twice), delete the partitions, and re-allocte as desired, and restore.
You might find a Knoppix CD handy for all this.

Have a look at "man fsck" - and search here as well for both fsck and resizing.