how to change the disk size on the fly?

harry2006 · 10-14-2008, 07:08 AM

Hi All. A couple of years back when I used to use Windows, I used to make heavy use of PartitionMagic to resize the partitions on the fly, obviously not the C: but others. When I installed Linux[fedora9 to be precise]I left around 8/10 GB of disk in windows partition [NTFS] which is accessible in linux. Now my basic disk in which the "/" directory exists is running short of space ( now i've around 2 out of 10GB left). So I want to know of something similar to PartitionMagic or maybe some command which I'm not aware of to do the same, change the root partition on the fly. Please help me. I'm running Fedora9 2.6.26.3-29.fc9.i686 machine with 512MB of memory. Thank you in appreciation.

bitpicker · 10-14-2008, 07:25 AM

Parted or, in one of its graphical incarnations, gparted, does pretty much the same thing as Partition Magic.

Robin

harry2006 · 10-14-2008, 07:47 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by bitpicker

Parted or, in one of its graphical incarnations, gparted, does pretty much the same thing as Partition Magic.

Robin

yeh, got it , thanks for your quick response. let me try it out, hope it does pretty much the same things as PartitionMagic.

syg00 · 10-14-2008, 07:49 AM

Use a liveCD.

salasi · 10-15-2008, 02:18 AM

I'm not sure exactly how you intend using the space in the extra partition but be aware that there is an alternative way of solving the 'running out of space on /' problem. You don't have to make the root partition itself larger to gain space.

You might prefer the partition resizing approach, but you might want to consider the alternative.

Steps

back stuff up!
using a live cd (ok, this isn't strictly necessary for stuff like /home, but makes it easier to describe the steps)
locate a big directory inside the full partition that could solve the problem by being relocated (stuff like /var, /tmp, and /usr are often good candidates, but it could be anything; partic /home or /home/big_user, if that hasn't happened already)
prepare a partition that is big enough to take the victim partition and then some
copy data
adjust fstab to mount new partition and remove old directory from directory structure

And then proceed with a / that is effectively bigger because it has had a big lump taken out of it and moved onto the new partition.

harry2006 · 10-15-2008, 03:50 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by salasi

I'm not sure exactly how you intend using the space in the extra partition but be aware that there is an alternative way of solving the 'running out of space on /' problem. You don't have to make the root partition itself larger to gain space.

You might prefer the partition resizing approach, but you might want to consider the alternative.

Steps

back stuff up!
using a live cd (ok, this isn't strictly necessary for stuff like /home, but makes it easier to describe the steps)
locate a big directory inside the full partition that could solve the problem by being relocated (stuff like /var, /tmp, and /usr are often good candidates, but it could be anything; partic /home or /home/big_user, if that hasn't happened already)
prepare a partition that is big enough to take the victim partition and then some
copy data
adjust fstab to mount new partition and remove old directory from directory structure

And then proceed with a / that is effectively bigger because it has had a big lump taken out of it and moved onto the new partition.

sounds pretty cool. will try it out. thank you very much.

andjohn2005 · 11-02-2008, 01:17 AM

I love gparted

gparted.sourceforge.net