I recently installed Mandrake 9.1 and didn't size my partitions the way I should have. My main Linux partition - the one that holds the kernel and software - isn't large enough to add any more stuff. I freed up about 500mb from my windows partition, using a handy utility Diskdrake that comes with Mandrake. But this utility won't let me resize the main Linux partition. In order to resize it, I have to unmount it, which doesn't seem possible while I'm running Linux. I've also tried resizing it with Partition Magic 7.0, but it doesn't seem to want to resize any of my Linux partitions - the option is greyed out. I've seen references to a Parted command - should I use that? I'd have to boot from a CD I guess to do that. I also have the Knoppix CD, does anyone know of utilities with that distro that I could use? And other suggestions are appreciated!

parted should do the job....

But if I boot up normally from my HD into Linux, will Parted allow me to resize my main Linux partition? Right now I'm thinking I'll have to boot with my Knoppix CD and then use parted to resize the HD partitions.

edit: after reading the documentation for Parted, I see that I should just run it from a floppy. No need to load up the whole Knoppix CD.

good luck...

let us know if you fixed your problem

I am also trying to resize a partition. Although I am trying to resize my D: drive from windows. It is a 20gig Seagate drive. I ran scandisk and defragged the drive and at that point I have 8gigs of freespace on it. So I boot into Mandrake and run diskdrake. I unmount the d drive and resize. Unfortunetly the FAt bounds seem to be telling it there is more data on the drive then there is cause it will only let me lower the size of the win part by 1.1gigs.

How can I repartition more of my windows drive? Any ideas?

The newest version of Partition Magic that recently came out now supports resizing Linux Partitions. Partition Magic 7 did not support resizing Linux partitions but Partition Magic 8 now has the ability to resize ext2, ext3 and ReiserFS partitions. I recently used Partition Maigic to resize a Linux ReiserFS parition and also a Windows Fat32 parition. It worked well. I used it to resize my /usr partition from 3GB to 6GB. I believe it also now supports resizing Windows NTFS partitions too.

As you probably already know, Partition Magic can be run just before starting any operating system, so it does not matter what is currently mounted or not.

Its true that Partition Magic 8 can resize both Linux and Windows partitions... since i also use it.... it should be able to resize your partitions without a hitch... but Partition Magic is not free.... Parted should do the job well too....

Wah. I have Partition Magic 7 which doesn't do Ext3 partitions (I guess I should have researched that before buying). And Parted will work with Ext3 partitions, but with some limitations. For instance, when resizing the partition it must have the same start point. Which means I can't make my Ext3 partition include the 500mb I freed up from the windows partition. So unless I (or somebody else) can think up some other solution, I may be deleting the Linux partitions and starting over with a fresh installation.

Reinstalling is always a last resort.... but thats your decision of course... good luck..

Check the website GNU parted for documentation for examples. You can move the partition but it takes several steps.

Documentation:

Move - ext3 - (provided the destination partition is larger than the source partition)

Resize - ext3 - restriction: the new start must be the same as the old start.


In theory I could move it if I were able to free up more space than the partition size. But I'm only able to free 500mb and the partition I want to move is almost 2gb. So I can't use the move command in this instance. I can't use the resize command either, because the 500mb of free space occurs before the partition I want to resize. I really think I'm stuck with a reinstall here - but it's not so bad because I just installed Linux 2 weeks ago and haven't done that much with it yet.

Hello,

You people have mentioned Parted. Is that a piece of software that comes with the distro or is it something I have to find and download myself?

And how do I use it? Thanks.

It's a command line partitioning program. It's better in my opinion than the partitioning program you get with DOS, but maybe not as good as Partition Magic. It's free and probably came with your distro, but if not it's a small download. It can also be fit onto 2 bootable floppy disks. Here's the website with downloads and instructions:

http://www.gnu.org/software/parted/

Thanks a lot! I'll try that later when I get off of work.