** Keith Watson keith.watson@kewill.com [2003-05-27 13:42]:
From: Simon Jude On Tue, 27 May 2003, Keith Watson wrote:
I'm getting to the point where I seriously need to re-organise my disks in terms of the number, layout and size of the partitions (i.e. reducing the Windows ones [FAT32] and expanding the GNU/Linux ones [ext3]).
In the past I've always used PartitionMagic for this but I'd like to stop using Windows based utilities entirely at some point.
What's the general opinion on parted as a tool for this?
Does anyone use a different GPL utility that they think is better?
fips usually does the job. I've never had any problems with it although the last time I used it to change the size of some partitions was some years ago in the days of redhat 5.2 to create some linux partitions on a windows only drive. If you do use it remember to defrag your windows disk before doing anything and use restorrb or to backup the bootsector in case things go wrong..
http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/PLIP-Install-HOWTO-12.html might help.
Simon
Thanks for the tip, sounds useful if you don't have a working GNU/Linux system, but, as I do, I was thinking of something that would run under that. According to the docs parted doesn't need the partitions defragged 1st (is that right?).
However, I think I'll get a copy of fips in case I ever need to convert a pure Windows system. Of course I suppose you could also use something like Knoppix if the system has a bootable CD drive. Is parted on Knoppix?
** end quote [Keith Watson]
Not actually booted my CD and tried it, but apparantly yes parted is on Knoppix apparantly (can't find the link I found the quote on, but it was from Knppix 3.2 onwards). Some other useful links you may be interested in:
Parted (where we started, but just for completeness sake) http://www.gnu.org/software/parted/parted.html
PartGUI (a graphical front end for Parted - can be setup to run off CD) http://part-gui.sourceforge.net/index.php
QTParted (another graphical fronted for Parted - also on Knoppix IIRC) http://qtparted.sourceforge.net/
PAUD (Parted and a few other useful utilities on a bootable disk) http://paud.sourceforge.net/
PartImage (creates partition images - a bit like Drive Image) http://www.partimage.org/
Have fun, and let's be careful out there ;-)