I just looked at the “posting permissions” and unfortunately I’m unable to insert the screen copy of the kde manager’s representation of the goal I want to hit.
So, I will try, with my poor english, to explain it with words and to be as clear as possible.
I got a dual boot system with 4 hard disks and grub installed on /dev/sdd1.
Windows xp sp2 (only used for professional audio tools, don’t whip me ^^) is installed on /dev/sdc1.
The disk sdc is partitioned with the following settings:
/dev/sdc1 * 1 498 4000153+ b W95 FAT32
/dev/sdc2 499 18922 147990780 f W95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/sdc5 499 1494 8000338+ b W95 FAT32
/dev/sdc6 1495 18922 139990378+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
When I partitioned the disk I was believing 4 Go were sufficient for windows xp but after years I realized that many applications were using the C: by default (no way to change it thru regedit or another workaround, f*****g hardcoding probably) installing stuffs and under windows this is impossible to use such blessed things like the unix’s symbolic links !!! So right now I’m a little tight with the remaining space to work with windows xp. (Of course the swap file has been moved to another partition since the first day I installed xp…)
The idea I have is to use the 7Go of unused space on this disk to size up the /dev/sdc1 partition.
When using kde partition manager I noticed that there is no way to use the unused disk space to size up /dev/sdc1 directly.
Do you think if I create a partition with the 7 Go of unused space that there is a way to size up /dev/sdc1 without messing up the bootloader ? I don’t think GRUB matters about the new partition, it should get the /dev/sdc7 entry.
*For the backup there is no problem this partition is completely backed up every two weeks (as an image) so the datas may not be lost as a real catastrophic… but if there is danger for the other partitions… that’s will be more annoying… but solvable ^^
*
Once partitioned I believe that there will be a way to “merge” the /dev/sdc1 and /dev/sdc7 partitions and then I would enjoy a new xp partition with 7Gb of free space (it would change from my actual 300Mb !!).
Technically it would be possible this is just a question of chaining the different blocks each others and refer to the new space added.
The last block in /dev/sdc1 would point to the first block that starts /dev/sdc7 and “that’s all”… and /dev/sdc7 would disappear as a partition.
Am I right to see the mechanism like this ?
Is there details I forgotten to take in account ?
Thank you for any help you could give ^^