1 Topic by sambul14 (edited by sambul14 2011-06-30 02:15:04)

  • sambul14
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Topic: Resizing a partition to the left an efficient way

There was a previous suggestion made to Resize partition without copying it's content that was safely ignored with indifferent comments for no objective reason.

Nonetheless, everyone who uses hard drives knows well a remarkable trend: their reliability drops with drive size increase, even for Green slower spinning models. Todays 2-3 Tb HDs are far less reliable than their smaller counterparts just a few years ago. I'm not even talking about 10-20 years old models - they still spin today without any issues while purchased 1-year ago HDs frequently fail one after another. And replacement refurb drives often work no longer than one extra month. It becomes a major task for each PC owner to use existing HD lifespan resource more efficiently.

Situation also changed with energy consumption and efficiency trends around the world . We must be responsible citizens of this planet, and take good care about spending its resources in the most efficient way. In view of these trends, current situation when increasing a partition to the left results in unnecessary copying of all its content to the left is no longer acceptable. For large drives with 2+ Tb of data such ops significantly decrease their lifespan and waste plenty of precious energy for no objective reason. Its especially true for lower quality consumer drive models, despite they often hold massive video & movie collections that frequently need expending.

Its a typical scenario, when a new large drive owner formats it originally with several partitions only to find later, some of them can be safely deleted to free more space for new video files. That's where we all face an acute problem of how to avoid copying all movie collections to the left at merging a previous and current partitions. Those of us, who gone through drive warranty repairs several times understand well what such ops entail.

I ask GParted developers to review their position on the topic and add an algorithm that would increase a partition to the left without copying all its content to the left. The time is long overdue for that task. There is absolutely no need to move huge data massive, waste precious energy and spend limited HD lifespan resources and significant user time for literally no objective reason. A joint switchable algorithm can be developed to resize partitions in any direction in a similar fashion. It will not result in increased program maintenance time, if done in a smart way. The differences in resizing a partition to the left from its END and BEGINNING aren't that significant code wise.

See also ongoing thread on Resize a Partition without moving its content in very popular Reboot.pro forum.

2 Reply by gedakc

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Re: Resizing a partition to the left an efficient way

GParted uses utilities from other file system projects to perform the actual resize of the file system.  For example GParted uses the resize2fs command from the e2fsprogs project to resize ext2/ext3/ext4 file systems.

As such I would recommend that you raise this request with each individual file system project if you wish these algorithms to be changed.

3 Reply by sambul14 (edited by sambul14 2011-07-01 00:47:53)

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Re: Resizing a partition to the left an efficient way

According to published statistics, wast majority of PC owners including myself now use  Windows 7/XP based systems, and most frequently want to resize NTFS partitions. Could you suggest, where I should direct my request in this case?

P.S. I look at NTFS support for GParted, and it appears that NTFSPROGS utilities are currently developed by 2 independent groups:
- Tuxera company
- Linux NTFS project (appears outdated, but according to its forum still alive).

So, which NTFSPROGS version & implementation is currently used in GParted? Would you want to update it to recently released by Tuxera V2011.4.12 ?

4 Reply by gedakc

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Re: Resizing a partition to the left an efficient way

The GParted Live image uses ntfsprogs-2.0.0-1+b1.  Since GParted simply calls the command ntfsresize, the ntfsresize command that is first on the path is the one that will be used.  Hence to my knowledge there would be no need to change the GParted application source code to use the Tuxera version.

One key item for a package to be included on the GParted Live image is that it must be available under a free software open source license, such as the GPL.  I believe that the Tuxera version is available under the GPL so feel free to place your request with either or both of these groups.  If/when your request is implemented then let us know so that we can look into including the appropriate package on the GParted Live image.