[ale] what should I do when resizing ext4 partition
Ron Frazier (ALE)
atllinuxenthinfo at techstarship.com
Mon Jun 10 20:38:34 EDT 2013
Hi Chuck,
I wasn't aware that gparted can clone disks. Actually, I've been a fan
of Acronis True Image since 2007 or so, and I have an old commercial
copy. When I bought this WD drive, I gained access to their version of
WD Acronis True Image, which is based on the 2009 codebase I think. It
looks for a WD drive and won't run if you don't have one. If you do
have a WD drive, then the software is free. This product has been
updated to handle advanced format drives with 4K sectors. There is also
the WD Align program, which can realign partition boundaries. If I had
to align the partition boundaries manually, I'd probably use the gparted
live cd instead. Running WD Align is an easy way to check the alignment
as well, even if you use something else to realign them. I've heard /
read that the new Acronis products are rubbish, so I probably won't buy
any more. In the past, I've been a Seagate fan and have had good
results overall. However, when shopping for this latest drive, the WD
Black was the only drive I could find with a 5 year warranty, so I
bought that one.
I've already booted windows on the new drive after the cloning /
resizing procedure. It's running fine, but it's reporting the physical
cluster size as 512. I may have to poke around some more to see if
that's working right.
Also, I have to determine if there are any other things I have to do to
Linux before trying to boot it. I haven't tried that yet. Even if the
OS boots OK, I'm wondering if I have to kill and rebuild the swap file, etc.
Sincerely,
Ron
On 6/10/2013 7:54 PM, Chuck Payne wrote:
> Ah, you were using a commerial program. Have you tried gparted live
> iso, does about the same thing and is free.
>
> On Mon, Jun 10, 2013 at 7:22 PM, Ron Frazier (ALE)
> <atllinuxenthinfo at techstarship.com> wrote:
>
>> Hi Chuck and JD,
>>
>> Thanks for your replies. I'm not using LVM unless Mint installs it by default. As far as I know, I'm not. The acronis true image software will have already resized all the original partitions, including the ext4 one, except the swap, essentially doubling their size. After altering the partition boundaries, true image will have copied all the data on the NTFS partitions and adjusted the master boot record of the drive. I don't think it will have any problem booting windows. It popped up a warning that I would have to repair the boot loader for linux, so I know it knows linux stuff is there. It will have copied the data, at the very least, in the ext4 mint partition. It may have copied the data by actually manipulating the ext4 file system, or it may have just copied each sector on the old partition to the new larger partition. I have no idea what it did with the swap file.
>>
>> So, just to sum up, the partitions have already been resized at the level of the disk partition table and the data has been copied by the cloning procedure. I didn't know if any internals of grub or the ext4 file system would be unhappy about being relocated to their new home and having new boundaries and possibly sector numbers. So, I didn't know if there is anything else I should do before trying to boot the system.
>>
>> Sincerely,
>>
>> Ron
>>
>>
>>
>> Chuck Payne<terrorpup at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>
>>> Questioin, are you running LVM? I am just wondering as I never heard
>>> that you could resize a partition unless it was a LVM. Please let me
>>> know.
>>>
>>> On Mon, Jun 10, 2013 at 5:40 PM, JD<jdp at algoloma.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> On 06/10/2013 02:38 PM, Ron Frazier (ALE) wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> Hi all,
>>>>>
>>>>> I have a machine which dual boots windows and mint. The 500 gb hdd
>>>>>
>>> is mbr with 4 primary partitions, ntfs windows, ext4 mint, linux swap,
>>> and ntfs data. I'm cloning the drive to a 1 tb wd drive with WD
>>> Acronis true image. This will automatically proportionally resize the
>>> partitions to the larger size. I know what to do with windows to make
>>> sure it's compatible after I reboot on the new drive. However, is
>>> there anything I should do with mint to make sure it boots properly and
>>> doesn't damage the mint os or other parts of the drive? As far as I
>>> can tell, the swap file will not be changed. As far as I can tell, the
>>> partition order will remain the same, but the boundaries will change.
>>> When I'm done, I'll check it to make sure everything is on 1 MB
>>> boundaries, but the WD Acronis program should do that automatically.
>>>
>>>>> Any help is appreciated.
>>>>>
>>>> I'm hardly an expert on Windows re-partitioning, but with the
>>>>
>>> new-fangled HDDs,
>>>
>>>> you definitely want to use Gparted or parted (not fdisk or similar
>>>>
>>> tools) to
>>>
>>>> created all the new partitions so they are aligned properly. With AF
>>>>
>>> drives,
>>>
>>>> you want to be on 4K boundaries, I think. google will answer better.
>>>>
>>> OTOH, if
>>>
>>>> you use gparted or parted, the alignment you "want" happens
>>>>
>>> automatically.
>>>
>>>> I'd use dd to clone partitions between 2 HDDs. If there is any issue
>>>>
>>> with the
>>>
>>>> source, then I'd use ddrescue.
>>>>
>>>> I've resized running ext4 partitions using resize2fs. Don't remember
>>>>
>>> anything
>>>
>>>> special about using it and haven't had any issues in the years since
>>>>
>>> the
>>>
>>>> resizing and I've resized about 5 times across different machines.
>>>>
>>> Of course,
>>>
>>>> there was space available after the old size partition to expand
>>>>
>>> into. Use
>>>
>>>> gparted otherwise - if you need to move partitions around. I keep a
>>>>
>>> gparted
>>>
>>>> bootable-USB drive ready for just this reason.
>>>>
>>>> IME, Linux is not nearly as picky as Windows about booting. I've
>>>>
>>> restored
>>>
>>>> backups to clean HDDs, then ran grub-install to setup the booting
>>>>
>>> slices.
>>>
>>>> Sometimes I like to have 6-10 bootable partitions on "play" machines.
>>>> Boot-repair is a nifty tool that will locate bootable partitions on
>>>>
>>> all
>>>
>>>> installed drives. It finds Windows partitions too.
>>>>
>>>> Anyway, I hope this helps.
>>>>
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>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>> Terror PUP a.k.a
>>> Chuck "PUP" Payne
>>>
>>> (678) 636-9678
>>> -----------------------------------------
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>>
>> --
>>
>> Sent from my Android Acer A500 tablet with bluetooth keyboard and K-9 Mail.
>> Please excuse my potential brevity if I'm typing on the touch screen.
>>
>> (PS - If you email me and don't get a quick response, you might want to
>> call on the phone. I get about 300 emails per day from alternate energy
>> mailing lists and such. I don't always see new email messages very quickly.)
>>
>> Ron Frazier
>> 770-205-9422 (O) Leave a message.
>> linuxdude AT techstarship.com
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>
>
>
--
(PS - If you email me and don't get a quick response, you might want to
call on the phone. I get about 300 emails per day from alternate energy
mailing lists and such. I don't always see new email messages very quickly.)
Ron Frazier
770-205-9422 (O) Leave a message.
linuxdude AT techstarship.com
Litecoin: LZzAJu9rZEWzALxDhAHnWLRvybVAVgwTh3
Bitcoin: 15s3aLVsxm8EuQvT8gUDw3RWqvuY9hPGUU
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