Move unallocated space from primary to ext partition

[bonesTdog]

The good news is I was able to shrink one of my partitions to create some unallocated space. The bad news is the unallocated space is on my primary partition, so gparted is not allowing me to use that space to create another partition since I already have two primaries and an extended. Any tricks to do that?

[Lostfarmer]

Post the output of 'fdisk-lu' l=a small L the command may need to be ran under root /su/sudo.

[bonesTdog]

Disk /dev/sda: 500.1 GB, 500107862016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 60801 cylinders, total 976773168 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0xcf892b78

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 2048 409599 203776 7 HPFS/NTFS
Partition 1 does not end on cylinder boundary.
/dev/sda2 409600 518449151 259019776 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda3 573851646 940978825 183563590 f W95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/sda4 945344512 976771071 15713280 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda5 838576935 940975244 51199155 83 Linux
/dev/sda6 573851648 595808255 10978304 82 Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sda7 595810304 790370303 97280000 83 Linux
/dev/sda8 790372352 838576934 24102291+ 83 Linux

Partition table entries are not in disk order

Disk /dev/sdb: 320.1 GB, 320072933376 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 38913 cylinders, total 625142448 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0xfce23fb6

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdb1 * 63 74075714 37037826 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sdb2 74075715 625137344 275530815 7 HPFS/NTFS

[Lostfarmer]

Can not verify as do not have gparted on this linux.

Running gparted should first enlarge the extended partition (sda3) to the left or toward sda2. then should be able to add a logical volume in the unalloted space.

You will not beable to create another primary partition. You have 3 primary + the extended partition, the max of 4. There are no ways around that limit of 4.
Logical volumes , you can have more the 16 depending on the linux in use. That will be sda5 and up.

[bonesTdog]

Hrmph. I wrestled with this quite a bit today, but can not seem to enlarge any of the sda3 partitions toward sda2. The two seem completely separated from what I can figure out. I even ran it while booted on a live CD so nothing was mounted but no luck. The partition closest to sda2 is sda3 (extended) and sda6 (swap) partition and both show a key next to it and "move" is not an available option. There are other partitions unlocked further to the right, but I don't know how to move them to the left to leapfrog other partitions. Even if I could, I will still have sda3 next to sda2 and locked.

Not sure if all of that made sense. I must be missing a trick somewhere or maybe some terminal warrior knows how to make that happen from the terminal.

[rokytnji]

Bad News Dog. Extended Partitions can only grab unallocated space from the extended area of drive in gparted. It can't touch unallocated space in Primary section. Terminal won't help either. It is the nature of the beast.

If you had shrunk one of your extended partitions into unallocated space. Then you could use it on another extended partition. Hope that makes sense.

Edit: Unless I am reading this all wrong.

My screeny to show what I mean

screenshot2.jpg

See that 2MB unallocated space on end of drive. Can't use it for nothing.

[bonesTdog]

Bummer. That is what I was afraid of... I was hoping there was some "super guru" option although I get some mild satisfaction knowing that there was a logical reason I could not figure out how to do it.

Thanks for your help.

[Lostfarmer]

I have no problems with newer live cd's to resize the extended partition as long as no logical volume is mounted. My old memis cd would only resize to the right with qparted.