GPARTED TOOL

1 Preliminary Note
As partitions must be unmounted in order to be modified, I think it's a good idea to use the GParted Live-CD instead of using the desktop application. Therefore I have downloaded the latest GParted Live-CD (0.3.3 at the time of this writing) from here:http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=115843&package_id=173828 and burnt it onto a CD. Obviously this method doesn't work for remote systems to which you don't have physical access, but for such a case this tutorial might be interesting for you: How To Resize ext3 Partitions Without Losing Data It is very important that you back up all your data before you modify your partitions with GParted. If all goes well, no data should be lost, but you can never know! In the following I will perform some operations just to show you how GParted works and what it can do. I don't say that all these operations make sense on a production system, but for demonstration purposes they are ok.

2 Working With GParted

Shut down your Linux system and make it boot from the GParted Live-CD. Hit ENTER at the boot prompt and choose your language and keymap later on in the boot process. It will also ask you for your preferred screen resolution. Afterwards the GParted desktop should come up:

The GParted application will start automatically and show you the current partitions (including their filesystem types) on the hard disk(s):

In the next step I want to shrink /dev/hda1, so I mark it and click on Resize/Move. The following window pops up:

Click on the right black arrow and drag it until the partition has its new (desired) size, then click on the Resize/Move button:

As you see, /dev/hda1 has been shrinked, and the new, free space is unallocated:

To create a new partition on the unallocated space, mark it and click on New:

Specify the size of the new partition (either by dragging the black arrows or by typing it into the input boxes) and select the filesystem. I choose ntfs here. Then click on Add:

The result is as follows:

Now I decided that ntfs is not the right filesystem for my new partition and that I'd like to use reiser4 instead. So I right-click the new partition and select reiser4 as filesystem. The result looks like this:

Next I want to move /dev/hda1 on the hard disk, i.e. move the beginning of /dev/hda1 to the right so that some unallocated space will be created to the left of /dev/hda1. Therefore I mark /dev/hda1 and click on Resize/Move and drag the left black arrow to the right:

The result looks like this. As you see, there's now some unallocated space at the beginning of the hard disk:

I mark that unallocated space, click on New and create an xfs partition:

Afterwards you can right-click the new partition and select Properties, and you'll get an overview of the new partition:

Of course, GParted denies to complete any action that is incorrect or impossible and shows you a comprehensible error message. For example, if you try to create a fifth primary partition, you'll see this:

Or, if you try to format a filesystem bigger than 2GB to hfs:

I skip a few steps now. In the meantime, I have moved my reiser4 partition to the right (so the unallocated space is now left of it) and converted it into a fat32 partition:

Next I convert it into a reiserfs partition that uses also the unallocated space:

Until now nothing has happened, i.e. the original partitioning hasn't been touched. To write our new partitioning to the disk, we must click on Apply. (To undo your changes, click on Undo.) GParted asks you if you are sure that you want to apply the pending operations. Click onApply again:

It is only now that all your modifications are written to the hard disk(s). GParted shows a short summary of the ongoing processes:

By clicking on Details GParted will display a little more information:

After all modifications have been written to the hard disk(s), you can shut down the desktop, remove the GParted Live-CD, and boot back into your normal system. If everything went well, no data should be lost now.