Repartitioning dual boot hard drive

I'll preface this request for info by saying I'm a fair novice with Linux, although i've been using Mandrake/driva for about 18 months - currently Mndrva 2006. It's installed on a Dell laptop.

Problem: Unfortunately i have undersized my /home partition and i now need to increase it (I'd like to partition the internal drive 50-50 with lin and xp - it's a 60Gb dirve)

As a step towards solving this i have installed an external firewire drive.
I'm assuming I'll have to reformat the laptop's drive so that i can rebuild the partition structure. Then reinstall the software in the appropriate partitions. After this transition I'd like to use the ext drive as a back up drive and possibly a data repository.

Therefore I assume i copy (using dd) the existing linux partition to the ext drive.

Can I also do this with my xp partition to the same ext drive? to do this do i need to set up specific partitions ie ext3 & NTFS?

Then I'll reformat the internal drive with the new partition sizes, then reinstall the copies.

I'm looking for some help with the details of this task - any takers?

After this transition i would like to upgrade to Mand 2007 (I'd like to try ubuntu but i can't get the live cd to boot - but that's another story).

thanx in advance,
pete

no need to format, re-install XP and Linux. you can use GParted LiveCD to rearrange/resize partitions.
post the output of 'fdisk -l' command. let us check if its feasible or not.








casper

Thanks for the reply...

Unfortunately I can't get my machine to boot the gparted cd (likewise with ubuntu and mandriva's live cds). I'm not sure why this is happening coz the Mand2007 install disk and the knoppix rescue disk both boot OK... beats me. :???:

I've attempted to reconfigure my partitions using diskdrak without success. I think part of the problem is that my /home dir is at the end of the drive and therefore has no space to expand into. And doesn't windoze have a limit to the number of partitions it will handle?

As you can see there's a number of things happening (against me) :mad:

Anyhow here's the fdisk -l output:

Disk /dev/hdc: 60.0 GB, 60011642880 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 7296 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hdc1 1 4 32098+ de Dell Utility
/dev/hdc2 5 5995 48122707+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/hdc3 5996 7296 10450282+ 5 Extended
/dev/hdc5 5996 6759 6136798+ 83 Linux
/dev/hdc6 6760 6822 506016 82 Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/hdc7 6823 7296 3807373+ 83 Linux

Disk /dev/sda: 164.6 GB, 164696555520 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 20023 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 1 3824 30716248+ 83 Linux

tia
pete

Update to above I CAN NOW BOOT GPARTED.

I had a dodgy win burnt cd. I just downloaded a new version of gparted and burnt it using good 'ol k3b and I'm now in the partition management business... yee hah! :mrgreen:

i couldn't do this until i got the ext drive coz i'm so out of space on my /home partition.

... but i'd still like some pointers before i launch into the reconfiguring, thanx muchly.

pete

i suggest you to create images of all the partitions in external drive before resizing through PartImage. if resize doesn't work or anyting goes wrong, you could put images back to the respective partitions.







casper

Thanks for that... I'll recreate the existing partition images on the ext drive then attempt the resize as suggested. I must say, now i have gparted it shouldn't cause too many drama (... famous last words?) ;)
pete

You can always just cp your linux filesystems over to the external drive like this:

cp /home /mnt/home-backup

cp /var /mnt/var-backup

This is from the book Linux Server Hacks volume 2.

You can then back up the Windoze partition, although why you'd want to dual boot in this day and age mystifies me.

I would get rid of the Dell utility partition when you're done backing up the HD, it's just a waste of space (and available partitions) anyway. Then you can make hda1 the Windoze partition, hda2 the Linux /boot partition, hda3 the swap (I seem to get better results with swap as a primary partition rather than a logical drive in the extended partition), and hda4 as the extended.

You could even play around a bit, and make a smaller Windoze NTFS partition for the OS and have one of the logical drives formatted FAT32, so that it can be a data drive accessible within both Windoze and Linux.

Thanx for the tips Mistoffeles, I still havn't managed to complete the entire task. I've been having trouble shrinking the winxp partition. Even after repeated defrags and chkdsk /f's gparted can't do it. So I've copied the complete win partition to the ext drive and will do likewise with the linux ones. Then I might just reformat the entire laptop drive and reinstall the partition copies - after I adjust the respective sizes.
Yes, I know running dual boot is a bit of an anacronism these days - but occasionally i have to use autocad and propriatry photographic software that is only available to the win/mac os's. Of course I could attempt the feat with wine or the like but I really don't have the wherewithall to devote the time to such (additional) learning - linux is enough for my plate at the moment, thanks very much ;)
pete