Partitioning with existing data

[binary_star]

Hi

I need to partition a drive which has existing data on it, without losing the data. Can any advise if a/ this is possible and b/ exactly the steps i need to do to acheive this 100% safely and the software required.

We really can not afford to lose the data as our company have invested alot of money in installing a new bit of very troublesome software on to the drive. unfortunately they didnt have the foresight to partition before the install, but i wasnt here so thats not my fault

Its a single partition drive running Redhat 5.5

Thanks
BS

[oz]

Hi

I need to partition a drive which has existing data on it, without losing the data. Can any advise if a/ this is possible and b/ exactly the steps i need to do to acheive this 100% safely and the software required.

We really can not afford to lose the data as our company have invested alot of money in installing a new bit of very troublesome software on to the drive. unfortunately they didnt have the foresight to partition before the install, but i wasnt here so thats not my fault

Its a single partition drive running Redhat 5.5

Thanks
BS

Welcome to the forums!

Manipulating partitions is never 100% safe, so you should always have a backup of any important data on hand before starting to tamper with them. Gparted can easily shrink/move/expand partitions even when they hold data. I personally prefer to use it from a liveCD such as Parted Magic.

[Rubberman]

What exactly do you mean? That the drive was formatted wtihout partitions? If so, then you will have to backup all the data, partition the drive, and reinstall the OS (if this is the system boot drive) and restore the data. If you mean that you need to repartition the drive so as to allocate some space to other file systems, then that can be done, but how depends upon the file system your current data is on.

[binary_star]

What exactly do you mean? That the drive was formatted wtihout partitions? If so, then you will have to backup all the data, partition the drive, and reinstall the OS (if this is the system boot drive) and restore the data. If you mean that you need to repartition the drive so as to allocate some space to other file systems, then that can be done, but how depends upon the file system your current data is on.

Yes there is only a single partition with the OS installed on it

drive details below:


Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/mapper/VolGroup00-LogVol00
937621428 45913924 843310808 6% /
/dev/sda3 101105 29213 66671 31% /boot
tmpfs 7730504 2211984 5518520 29% /dev/shm
none 7730416 104 7730312 1% /var/lib/xenstored

[yancek]

I see two partitions, your boot on sda3 and the / as an LVM which is standard for Red Hat. I think it will be problematic, or maybe I should say different, to do resizing on an LVM setup than with standard partitions. Never used LVM so I can't help but I'm sure someone else with more knowledge in the area can.

In the meantime, you might try googling modify LVM ?

[Rubberman]

Please post the output of the command fdisk -l - that will show the partitioning information. From what I can see, there are more than one partition on the disc - one is for /boot, and / is on an LVM group which probably is actually situated on another physical partition. Anyway, the output of fdisk will show how the drive is partitioned. The root file system where most of the OS and user files is located certainly has enough space that you can resize it and then add a partition to the disc. Please be more specific about what you are trying to accomplish and why. That will help guide us to give you the best advice on how to accomplish that.

[binary_star]

Please post the output of the command fdisk -l - that will show the partitioning information. From what I can see, there are more than one partition on the disc - one is for /boot, and / is on an LVM group which probably is actually situated on another physical partition. Anyway, the output of fdisk will show how the drive is partitioned. The root file system where most of the OS and user files is located certainly has enough space that you can resize it and then add a partition to the disc. Please be more specific about what you are trying to accomplish and why. That will help guide us to give you the best advice on how to accomplish that.

Thanks for the help on this guys, much appricated

We are tring to split the drive, as at the moment we are only using 6% of the total size and we want to have more instances of the same software as DEV & TEST sandpits with the existing environment being our production instance.

fdisk results below


Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 1 15 120456 de Dell Utility
/dev/sda2 * 16 277 2104515 b W95 FAT32
/dev/sda3 278 290 104422+ 83 Linux
/dev/sda4 291 121469 973370317+ 5 Extended
/dev/sda5 291 121469 973370286 8e Linux LVM

Thanks

[yancek]

Your LVM partition (sda5) is equivalent to your Extended partition (sda4) so you should be able to modify the LVM(sda5). I did a quick google and found some sites Didn't mean anyting to me but, I've never used LVM so maybe search Red Hat resize LVM while waiting for a response here.

[Rubberman]

The LVM management tools allow you to resize the partition. In the Administration menu you should see an entry for LVM (Logical Volume Management) which will allow you to do this. That said, be sure to backup all your data to an external drive or another system first! Caveate User!

[binary_star]

Great thanks for your help. I think we are going to get a Linux admin to come in for a day to do this, just dont want to risk it (or get the blame..!)

How much effort is it to resize a drive this size into 4 equally sized partitions?