1 Topic by joepc

  • joepc
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Topic: Increase drive partition question

I have a firmware RAID 5 array on a dell server.  There are 6 drives all together to make the array.  It is running windows 2003 server.  If I look in device manager I see only one disk. DISK 0 that is a basic disk.  It is broken up into 2 partitions, one primary partition, and the other an extended partition.

I need to take some of the extended partition and add it the primary.  However when I load gparted it will not allow me to add more space to my primary partition.  I tried reducing 20GB off the extened partition hoping that it would allow me to allocate to the primary but no luck. 

Any ideas????

2 Reply by class413

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Re: Increase drive partition question

You don't mention any error message, the GParted version used, as well as details on the partition system reported by windows and by GParted.

I think you have to shrink the first logical partition in the extended one to make free space, then shrink the extended partition to make unallocated space next to the primary partition. After that you could expand that primary partition.

*** It is highly recommended to backup any important files before doing resize/move operations. ***

3 Reply by joepc

  • joepc
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Re: Increase drive partition question

Thank you for your prompt reply, I really appreciate it.

No error messages or anything.  It sounds like I am missing the shrink piece.  I am using ver 0.3.4 and GParted is seeing the partitions as NTFS.  I looked in the GUI but couldn't find where to "shrink" the logical partition.  I did see it listed as a feature for NTFS.

4 Reply by gedakc

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Re: Increase drive partition question

The "shrink" option is named "Resize/Move".  With this option you can shrink, grow, or move a partition.

Version 0.3.4 is quite old and contains a bug regarding alignment with hard drive cylinder boundaries.  As such I would recommend that you download the latest version (0.3.9) and use it instead.

The Live CD (0.3.9-4) is a great way to use GParted since it does not mount any partitions, contains all the required packages, and lets you boot from the CD directly into GParted.

5 Reply by class413

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Re: Increase drive partition question

(Moving the topic to the Live media section).

*** It is highly recommended to backup any important files before doing resize/move operations. ***