Partiton Resizing - sda3-6 => sda3 with data preservation

[DrCR]

Hello, I have the current setup for a storage hard drive.

/dev/sda1 HPFS/NTFS - empty
/dev/sda2 Linux - empty
/dev/sda3 Linux - empty
/dev/sda5 HPFS/NTFS - empty
/dev/sda6 Linux - precious backups

I would like to change the partition setup to:
/dev/sda1 HPFS/NTFS - empty
/dev/sda2 Linux - empty
/dev/sda3 Linux - with precious backups, size=sda3+5+6

How should I merge sda3, sda5, and sda6 without destroying the data on sda6? A command line solution is preferred. I'm sure I could do this in GParted, or at least Parted Magic's hacked version of GParted anyway. I'd prefer to "really" know how to do it.


Thanks,
DrCR

__________________
A5N8X, 3500+ single-core Manchester, 2x512MB Corsair XMS, MSI 7600GT
S-12 430W, HR-05, Scythe Mime, VF900 modded with Scythe 80x25mm. Dual D12SL-12 Yate Loons
WD1200JB, WD3200JB, HD501LJ
Dual, independant WinXP installs via Grub hiding, VectorLinux 5.1.1SOHO, 5.8SOHO.
- - - - -
MacBook Pro Santa Rosa, 2.2GHz, 250GB Scorpio, Ceramique compound, Pending Appled-Tux Logo mod
MBRed Hard Drive with: OSX, WinXP, Vista (MSDN, pending), Sidux 2007-03
Pending Fusion "bootcamp" VMs pointing to native OS installs

[oz]

Just thinking out loud here, but it might be easiest to simply delete 3 and 5 rather than trying to merge them, then you can expand 6, and then relabel it sda3.

Would that work?

[DrCR]

That should work. I used merge in a nontechnical sense.

Is it a problem sda6 is a logical, and sda3 a primary though? I'll make a backup of the partition table using dd and start tinkering.

DrCR

[devils casper]

Something is wrong somewhere. Which one is your Extended Partition? sda2 or sda3?
You can't save any data or mount an Extended Partition. Its just a pointer or Container that contains Logical Partitions.
sda6 is Logical partition inside an Extended Partition.
Post the exact output of fdisk -l command here.

[DrCR]

I thought it would be apparent that anything >= sda5 would be logicals and anything else would be primaries. Sorry for any confusion.

sda1-3 = Primaries, sda5-6 = Logicals

Disk /dev/sda: 500.1 GB, 500107862016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 60801 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

 Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1               1        3824    30716248+   7  HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda2            3825        7648    30716280   83  Linux
/dev/sda3            7649       20396   102398310   83  Linux
/dev/sda4           20397       60801   324553162+   f  W95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/sda5           20397       28045    61440561    7  HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda6           28046       60801   263112538+  83  Linux

DrCR

___________________
A5N8X, 3500+ single-core Manchester, 2x512MB Corsair XMS, MSI 7600GT
S-12 430W, HR-05, Scythe Mime, VF900 modded with Scythe 80x25mm. Dual D12SL-12 Yate Loons
WD1200JB, WD3200JB, HD501LJ
Dual, independant WinXP installs via Grub hiding, VectorLinux 5.1.1SOHO, 5.8SOHO.
- - - - -
MacBook Pro Santa Rosa, 2.2GHz, 250GB Scorpio, Ceramique compound, Pending Appled-Tux Logo mod
MBRed Hard Drive with: OSX, WinXP, Vista (MSDN, pending), Sidux 2007-03
Pending Fusion "bootcamp" VMs pointing to native OS installs

[devils casper]

Yes. /dev/sda3 is Primary and /dev/sda4 is an Extended Partition. You can merge Logical Partitions with Primary. You have to shrink/delete Extended first and that you can do after shrinking/deleting Logical partitions only.