Repartitioning Hard Drive

Falcata · 2008-02-27 12:47:44

The partition that has my home folder is nearly full, and so I'm going to be having some problems pretty soon. How do I repartition my hard drive?

bender02 · 2008-02-27 16:49:36

Backup everything (at the very least the partitions that you need to touch), unmount the partitions that you need to touch and then use a partition editor: fdisk or cfdisk, or parted or gparted or qtparted (the last 2 are gui). Then create filesystems on newly created/changed partitions, copy the data back over, and update /etc/fstab.

All this assumes that you're not going to be touching the root partition. If yes, you need to do it from a live cd/usb.

You might find LVM (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logical_Vo … er_(Linux)) interesting, if you often need resizing.

Falcata · 2008-02-29 00:37:01

Is it at all possible to convert my file system to LVM? If so, is it much of a head ache for someone who has never attempted to do so before?

EDIT: I attempted to repartition my hard drive through a live cd, but it wouldn't let me. Whenever I tried to change the volume size in gparted, it would switch back to the previous value as soon as I set the cursor to a different field. Trying to mount the hard drives gives me a message saying "enclosing volume is locked" or something like that.

Last edited by Falcata (2008-02-29 00:56:22)

bender02 · 2008-02-29 02:23:20

Well, you need to have *empty* space right after the partition, if you want to just to *grow* it. Otherwise you need to delete (some) partitions (you lose the data unless they are copied elsewhere), and recreate a new layout, create filesystems, and copy the data back over.

LVM is not a filesystem. It's a way to manage partitions. You devote (usually) one big partition to LVM, and from then on you don't touch it with the usual partitioning tools. For them, it's just one partition. Then using LVM tools, you are able to create, resize, delete, etc... the "LVM partitions" (called 'volumes'). They look just like regular partitions to linux with lvm module loaded, and they look like nothing to anything else (ie you will not be able to access those volumes from windows, or any other system for that matter). The advantage is that LVM tools make it relatively painless when it comes to resizing, deleting, adding, etc...

If you want to "convert" to LVM, what it takes is: copy all data to a safe place, use fdisk to delete all partitions you want to let LVM manage, and create just one empty partition. Boot from a CD (or regularly, if you keep the root partition, which is probably wise on the first try), use LVM tools to let LVM know that it should manage that empty partition, create the partitions you need, create filesystems on them, copy the data back onto them, update /etc/fstab. Check out the wiki.

Falcata · 2008-02-29 03:16:36

It looks as though I'm out of options. I'm not really willing to uninstall anything right now. The main reason being that the previous times I installed Arch Linux, I was using my brother's laptop to look up the installation guide. However, a couple of days ago his system died, showing a Blue Screen of Death with the error message "UNMOUNTABLE_BOOT_VOLUME". So, I can't look up the information I need to do the re-installation.

In any case, I can't repartition my system from a live cd. Attempting to mount them from a live cd results in the error message "The enclosing drive for the volume is locked". I've already checked google and several other search engines, and I got 3-4 results, none of which were helpful at all.

bender02 · 2008-02-29 03:38:32

There's one thing that might help: if you can't repartition, just copy some of your data from /home to some other place, and then create a symlink to it. For instance, I don't keep my photos/music/videos in my /home folder, but on an extra partition, which I mount to /data. I then place symlinks into my home dir pointing out to /data/<whatever>. That way, I never use more that 1G of space in my home dir.

EDIT: I don't know what that error message means, but when you are repartitioning, all the partitions you are changing should be unmounted. So if a livecd automatically mounts your hard drive partitions, you need to unmount them manually before trying to repartition.

Last edited by bender02 (2008-02-29 03:41:06)

Falcata · 2008-02-29 20:06:40

They weren't mounted when I inserted the livecd. If they were, then the option to resize or move them would be greyed out.

Arch Linux

#1 2008-02-27 12:47:44

Repartitioning Hard Drive

#2 2008-02-27 16:49:36

Re: Repartitioning Hard Drive

#3 2008-02-29 00:37:01

Re: Repartitioning Hard Drive

#4 2008-02-29 02:23:20

Re: Repartitioning Hard Drive

#5 2008-02-29 03:16:36

Re: Repartitioning Hard Drive

#6 2008-02-29 03:38:32

Re: Repartitioning Hard Drive

#7 2008-02-29 20:06:40

Re: Repartitioning Hard Drive

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