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Old 05-08-2015, 05:11 PM   #1
Gregg Bell
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Need a very easy (stupid-simple) way to partition a flash drive


Yes, newbie here. I managed to partition a flash drive earlier in "Disks" (I'm using Xubuntu) and it was a miracle that I pulled it off. Now I want to do another partition and I was just looking at "Disks" again and I was terrified I was going to lose data.

What I'd like to do is take a 16GB flash drive and set aside 2GB so that I can copy and paste roughly 1GB of data there. The 1GB of data will not increase much. All it will ever need would be the 2GB.

So what's easy? Simple? User-friendly? User-best friendly? Maybe "Disks" is the easiest thing around. Believe me, I've searched for tutorials and couldn't find anything that wasn't old. (If you have a good one please leave a link.) (There seem to be lots of tutorials for G-parted but that looks complicated.)

Thanks!
 
Old 05-08-2015, 07:07 PM   #2
michaelk
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I suggest using gparted. Make sure that any important data is backed up because there is always the chance of something going wrong and be sure the drive is unmounted.

http://gparted.org/display-doc.php?name=help-manual
 
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Old 05-08-2015, 07:53 PM   #3
standards
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Quote:
Originally Posted by michaelk View Post
I suggest using gparted. Make sure that any important data is backed up because there is always the chance of something going wrong and be sure the drive is unmounted.

http://gparted.org/display-doc.php?name=help-manual
Agreed.
 
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Old 05-08-2015, 08:03 PM   #4
jefro
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To be totally safe you could remove internal drive and boot to almost any live media that either has gparted or can download it.

Not sure there is a great reason to do this but I have before.

You will have to download a number of things if you don't have gparted already. There is a gparted live media too.
 
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Old 05-08-2015, 08:28 PM   #5
yancek
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If you still have the DVD/flash drive you used to install Xubuntu, it should have GParted on it. The best source of information for GParted is the manual at the link below:

http://gparted.org/display-doc.php?name=help-manual

The link below is a very good tutorial and Section 6.C explains creating a new partition

http://www.dedoimedo.com/computers/gparted.html
 
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Old 05-09-2015, 04:27 AM   #6
fatmac
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If you have only one partition with data in it, the safest thing to do is to back up that data before re partitioning the drive.
I remember how scary it can be, but I suggest using a terminal program to do it, as you can't accidentally click on something & wreck your drive.
My choice is fdisk, it needs running as root/sudo, but before running it, remove & then re plug in your pendrive, then run
Code:
dmesg | tail
which will tell you how your system sees your pendrive, (likely as /dev/sdb), then just make sure you are operating on it. If it is indeed /dev/sdb, then use
Code:
sudo fdisk /dev/sdb
NB Nothing is changed until you write it to disk, plenty of time to check what you do.
 
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Old 05-09-2015, 04:51 AM   #7
michaelk
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gparted is better then fdisk since it will resize the old filesystem as well as resize the existing partition at the same time. There is more then one way to accomplish the task but would consider fdisk more scary. With fdisk once the existing filesystem is resized you need to delete the old partition then recreate it with the correct size value before creating the new partition. Or backup, repartition, format, restore.
 
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Old 05-09-2015, 01:20 PM   #8
fatmac
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Quote:
Or backup, repartition, format, restore.
That is exactly what I am recommending.
 
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Old 05-09-2015, 03:48 PM   #9
michaelk
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Many consider the CLI scary and fdisk is not user friendly compared to cfdisk. I wanted to expand on your suggestion to prevent the OP from thinking it was a one step process.
 
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Old 05-09-2015, 04:42 PM   #10
Gregg Bell
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Quote:
Originally Posted by michaelk View Post
I suggest using gparted. Make sure that any important data is backed up because there is always the chance of something going wrong and be sure the drive is unmounted.

http://gparted.org/display-doc.php?name=help-manual
Thanks. See, even right off the bat I was doing something wrong because I was making sure the flash drives were mounted (and wondered why "Disks" was unmounting them.)

Last edited by Gregg Bell; 05-09-2015 at 04:44 PM.
 
Old 05-09-2015, 04:44 PM   #11
Gregg Bell
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Quote:
Originally Posted by jefro View Post
To be totally safe you could remove internal drive and boot to almost any live media that either has gparted or can download it.

Not sure there is a great reason to do this but I have before.

You will have to download a number of things if you don't have gparted already. There is a gparted live media too.
Can't I just get gparted from the Ubuntu Software Center?
 
Old 05-09-2015, 04:46 PM   #12
Gregg Bell
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Quote:
Originally Posted by yancek View Post
If you still have the DVD/flash drive you used to install Xubuntu, it should have GParted on it. The best source of information for GParted is the manual at the link below:

http://gparted.org/display-doc.php?name=help-manual

The link below is a very good tutorial and Section 6.C explains creating a new partition

http://www.dedoimedo.com/computers/gparted.html
Thanks. Don't have the flash drive used to install 15.04 and 15.04 (Xubuntu) doesn't have gparted on it. Thanks for the link and narrowing it down for me by highlighting 6C.
 
Old 05-09-2015, 04:47 PM   #13
Gregg Bell
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Quote:
Originally Posted by fatmac View Post
If you have only one partition with data in it, the safest thing to do is to back up that data before re partitioning the drive.
I remember how scary it can be, but I suggest using a terminal program to do it, as you can't accidentally click on something & wreck your drive.
My choice is fdisk, it needs running as root/sudo, but before running it, remove & then re plug in your pendrive, then run
Code:
dmesg | tail
which will tell you how your system sees your pendrive, (likely as /dev/sdb), then just make sure you are operating on it. If it is indeed /dev/sdb, then use
Code:
sudo fdisk /dev/sdb
NB Nothing is changed until you write it to disk, plenty of time to check what you do.
Thanks mac. Pretty intimidated by doing it not in the CLI. CLI is beyond my skill at this point. Maybe some day.
 
Old 05-09-2015, 04:49 PM   #14
Gregg Bell
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And not to be redundant here but nobody liked "Disks"? Granted I was lucky using it but it seemed simple and there is so much instructional info. on gparted, I'm wondering if "Disks" is maybe easier?
 
Old 05-09-2015, 05:10 PM   #15
rokytnji
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R5HJZNZAQ6U

So I hope I covered

Quote:
So what's easy? Simple? User-friendly? User-best friendly? Maybe "Disks" is the easiest thing around. Believe me, I've searched for tutorials and couldn't find anything that wasn't old. (If you have a good one please leave a link.) (There seem to be lots of tutorials for G-parted but that looks complicated.)

Last edited by rokytnji; 05-09-2015 at 05:18 PM.
 
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