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Sc9

Member

Registered: 2010-08-03

Posts: 2

[solved] Moving data between partitions

Hi,

I currently have separate /boot, swap, / and /home partitions. I'd like to no longer have a separate /home partition so I can use the fourth partition for Windows, but I'm not sure on all the steps of how to do this. What I'm planning is (using a livecd)

Move everything in sda4 to sda3/home, then remove the line for the /home partition from /etc/fstab.

I'm not sure how to go about moving everything between the partitions though. (~11G in /home, and plenty of space in the / partition). Will mv * do the job, or will hidden files etc be missed? Also, will this maintain permissions etc?

Thanks for any help.

Last edited by Sc9 (2010-08-03 18:00:53)

cesura

Package Maintainer (PM)

From: Tallinn, Estonia

Registered: 2010-01-23

Posts: 1,867

Re: [solved] Moving data between partitions

You can boot the live CD, mount both partitions, and copy date between the two. You're simply copying the entire home directory to the root directory:

# cp -r /path/to/home /path/to/root

Example:

# cp -r /mnt/home /mnt/root

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karol

Archivist

Registered: 2009-05-06

Posts: 25,440

Re: [solved] Moving data between partitions

You can boot the live CD, mount both partitions, and copy date between the two. You're simply copying the entire home directory to the root directory:

# cp -r /path/to/home /path/to/root

Example:

# cp -r /mnt/home /mnt/root

What about symlinks? :-)

diegonc

Member

Registered: 2008-12-13

Posts: 42

Re: [solved] Moving data between partitions

I've seen somebody pass the -a switch to cp so it copies also the file's attributes.

I'd like to no longer have a separate /home partition so *I can use the fourth partition for Windows*

symlinks don't look like a good idea

Inxsible

Forum Fellow

From: Chicago

Registered: 2008-06-09

Posts: 9,183

Re: [solved] Moving data between partitions

I would still keep / and /home separate, but you could create the whole Linux install in an extended partition.

Although, going through all that might be a hassle, since linux is already installed and it would involve changing a lot of partitions and any mis-step could be disastrous.

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Sc9

Member

Registered: 2010-08-03

Posts: 2

Re: [solved] Moving data between partitions

Thanks, used cp -a and it worked.

Yeah, I'd ideally like them separate on an extended partition, but didn't fancy too much messing around.

jamesbond007

Member

From: Germany

Registered: 2009-06-14

Posts: 150

Re: [solved] Moving data between partitions

Hi Sc9,

I guess I would use rsync to copy the home directory. Collecting the desired options from the manpage can be quite time-consuming, but a Google search will quickly reveal some working examples for your use case.

Kind regards,
jamesbond007.