Merging Partitions on Different Disks with Linux installed

English Install/Boot/Login
#1

I have 2 HDD on my PC. THe problem is that I have 4 systems installed on my PC: openSuSE 11.1, Mac OS X 10.5.5, Ubuntu 8.04, and Windows XP. My Ubuntu and Windows are full and I want to erase OS X (Linux is better) to make space. Here is my partition table:
**
/dev/sda:**

/dev/sda1 → EXT3 167GB (openSuSE 11.1)
/dev/sda2 → Linux Swap 4GB
/dev/sda3 → HFS+ 61.81GB (Backup OS X / Keeping it)

/dev/sdb:

/dev/sdb1 → Linux Swap 2GB
/dev/sdb2 → NTFS 39GB (XP)
/dev/sdb3 → HFS+ 154.56GB (Mac OS X - Deleting it)
/dev/sdb4 → EXT3 37.25 GB (Ubuntu)

I want to make my Ubuntu bigger(backup OS) and my XP bigger(gaming) since they are almost full(-4GB free on each). I also want to kake my openSuSE 11.1 bigger because I backup Wii games on it and it’s my main OS. I want to delete my OS X because I don’t use it anymore. How can I make my openSuSE bigger by 40-60GB using RAID without having to reinstall everything. I have a Live CD of Ubuntu and openSuSE 11.0 so I have both GParted and YaST partitioner.

#2

I think you could temporarily delete sda2, delete sda3, then extend sda1, leaving 4GB of space for swap on new sda2.

As for sdb, I don’t know if you can extend NTFS using gparted. If so, the logical thing to do would be to extend NTFS forwards and Ubuntu backwards.

You could do the sda changes using Ubuntu and the sdb changes using SUSE. Or use gparted live for both, probably safest.

#3

I am keeping sda3(backup) so that won’t work… Do you know how to make a RAID partition?

#4

Well if you want to extend sda1 you’ll have to give up some space from sda3 so that means reformatting it, unless there is a way to shrink a HFS partition with gparted. Don’t you want to use ext3 for the backup partition instead? Changing the FS type will mean reformatting. You could copy the files somewhere else temporarily.

I don’t see what RAID has to do with what you want since you need at least two partitions to make RAID1, which means you lose half the capacity. RAID5 or 6 requires even more partitions. And RAID cannot be made out of existing partitions, they have to be formatted freshly as RAID.

#5

Hello all,

I’ll join this thread with a little bit different question.

Is it possible somehow to merge two ext4 partitions in openSUSE 11.2?
GParted seems lack of this function. Or am I missing something?

#6

No you can not merge partitions. File systems do not work like that. You can just adjust size and position of the partition chunks. Any time you play with partition be warned that you could destroy the data. Always backup first.

#7

Magic server partition manager-partition wizard can support many OS,include:Supported Windows Operating Systems
Windows 7 (32 & 64 bit)
Windows Vista (32 & 64 bit)
Windows XP (32 & 64 bit)
Windows 2000 Professional
Windows Server 2008 (32 & 64 bit)
Windows Server 2003 (32 & 64 bit)
Windows 2000 Server Family
and linux ext2 ext3 and swape
it can tech you how to merge partitions without data loss:
Step one: Select partition you like to expand from the partition list. This partition will be expanded to include all content from the adjacent partition which will be selected in the second step.
Step two: Select an adjacent partition that will be merged to the previous partition. All data of this partition will be merged to the expanding partition that selected in the first step.

Step three: Choose a name for the new folder.
The drive E will be expanded to 139.54 GB. And the data of drive F will be stored to the e:\merged_partition_content.

#8

Actually it’s possible using LVM.
Check the tutorial in the following link:

TipsAndTricks/ExpandLV - CentOS Wiki

#9

LVM does not merge partitions it does merge file systems on multiple partitions. But you have to create LVM partitions to use it. Does not work on any old partition.