How to extend an existing partition to take up sectors before it

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1

Hi,

My PC has two internal drives, /dev/sda and /dev/sdb. /dev/sdb used to have Ubuntu 14.04 installed on /dev/sdb2, with /dev/sdb1 being the /boot/efi partition (also used by openSUSE Tumbleweed on /dev/sda2, so I have left it undeleted) and /dev/sdb3 being the swap partition (which I have deleted). /dev/sdb4 is my data partition, where I keep data I want to be able to use between my OS installations. I would like to extend my data partition to include all the space I’ve freed up by deleting /dev/sdb2 and /dev/sdb3. Unfortunately YaST2’s partitioner (i.e., /usr/sbin/yast2 disk) won’t let me, instead it will only let me extend /dev/sdb4 to take up the space freed by deleting the swap partition, /dev/sdb3 only. This is because /dev/sdb3 contained sectors that came after /dev/sdb4. Is there a way to extend my /dev/sdb4 partition, without deleting its data, to include sectors before it?

Thanks for your time,
Brenton

2

I’m not 100% sure but gparted on a cd or usb stick is more flexible so it may be able to do it.

3

At least you should post your partition tables to go witth your story telling. It is the only way others can be sure what the partition situation is:

su -l -c 'fdisk -l'
4

You can only extend a partition from the end you can not add to the front. Move then extend