Can i resize my partition without loosing data?
 

Hey guys,
First of all thank you everyone for helping me out in the last month... In the last 30 days I switched from 100 % windoze to 100% linux and its only fair that I credit you guys for helping me see the light!!!

That being said... I have a Question. When i reformatted my HDD I broke it down into 3 parts... C(15GB Ntfs), D(10gbfat32) and E(5gb linux ext3) and since i was a complete noob I thought id use the 5gb to check out distros... and after i hit ubuntu..I never turned back. Now the Question is is there anyway I can add some extra space to my Linux partition without having to format and reinstall the whole thing? It took me a lott time and effort to get my Ubuntu to where it is now and I just dont wanna go through all that again... Please suggest!
PS- I know some might say I can mount my fat32 and use it too... which i am doing right now..but id rather have a fair chunk added to linux drive.

thanks guys! GO UBUNTU!

You can remove the FAT partition and use it as an ext3 /home partiton also. ;) Just an idea.

I wish i could do that buddy! but since i use windows at work I need the fat32 to store files where i can access them through both windoze and linux! thank you for the sugg. anyways!

You could resize FAT32 partitions (not sure of NTFS though) using tools like Partition Magic. Unfortunately Partition Magic is a commercial Windows product.

Also make sure you back up all your data before embarking on such a risky venture.

The answer to your question is: yes and no. Yes, if you resize a partition, you will loose data; no, if you make a backup first which you can restore after resizing, you will not loose data.

Get Knoppix (download and burn to cd, or buy the cd). While you're at it, use www.google.com/linux and look up Knoppix cheatsheets, which give you commands to use when booting Knoppix (it's German; if you want to see English or some other language, you'll need the appropriate boot codes).

Make a backup of the partitions you propose to change in size (boot increasing and decreasing). Changing the size will not move the files, only change the geometry of the partition. Ergo, the backups.

Boot Knoppix, and use cfdisk to resize the partitions (which will also rewrite the partition tables, if Linux partitions are involved). Remember that the root (/) of the filesystem must be flagged as bootable. Then, while in Knoppix, restore the backups to their respective partitions.

That ought to do it.