1 Topic by vaag256 (edited by vaag256 2008-12-09 23:01:44)

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Topic: gparted has been reading for 10 hours and going

i am in the following situation:
a few months ago, when i bought my computer,
    i used gparted to make the first 300gb of my 750gb disk in to a ntfs partition.
(at that point i thought that i might make 2-3 other partitions for linux/mac, i use vista)
now, a few months later, the 300gb is starting to get full, so i decided to simply boot into gparted and add the remaining 450gb to the first partition (instead of making a new one) and clicked go.

now gparted is in operation and says that its reading x (x=large number ) amount of clusters with block size 256 sectors , what this means exactly is beyond me , at the beginning it said that it would take 9 hours, after 10 hours it says that it will take 5.5 hours.

now, my questions are,
is this normal?
if this is "reading" is there "writing" which takes similar amounts of time?
is it safe to cancel while in "read" mode?

i will try to provide other information if necessary

any and all help is greatly appreciated

edit: it might be worth noting that my computer is fairly fast with q6600 processor and 8gb ram

2 Reply by gedakc (edited by gedakc 2008-12-09 22:10:57)

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Re: gparted has been reading for 10 hours and going

Which version of GParted are you using?

Versions up to and including 0.3.8 had a glitch (bug #546423) in the optimum block size algorithm, and would favour small block sizes even on faster computers.  This would account for the small 256 sector block size you mentioned.

Both reading and writing use the optimal block size algorithm.

If you are using a newer version of GParted, then this may be a new problem to investigate.

3 Reply by vaag256

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Re: gparted has been reading for 10 hours and going

hmm ok, but do you think the writing part will consume an equally large amount of time, and if its safe to cancel while still "reading"?

as far as version goes, i downloaded this a few months ago, so it might be the older version, ill check this when possible

thanks for your help so far, its truly appreciated!

4 Reply by class413

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Re: gparted has been reading for 10 hours and going

In general, it isn't recommended to stop a resizing/moving operation, because it leaves the filesystem in a "dirty" state. Very long times were an issue, until the bug #546423 was discovered and fixed. There were operations longer than 40 hours, in some cases. Usually, newer GParted versions fix older problems, that's why we recommend to use the latest version.

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

5 Reply by vaag256

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Re: gparted has been reading for 10 hours and going

ok, woke up this morning and its still going lol, its currently copying with a blocksize of 1024 sectors, and an estimated time of 20 hours left (the estimated time does not seem fully accurate though)
ill be sure to use the latest version next time neutral

i do have one more question, gparted uses a small blocksize, does this leave any permanent problems, such as my harddisk being slower than it should be?
and if it does, is there any way for me to change the sector size without losing my files ?(using the latest gpart?)

6 Reply by gedakc

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Re: gparted has been reading for 10 hours and going

The block size is simply the size of each chunk of data that is read and then written.  It will not affect the file system block sizes on the disk, and will not adversely affect your hard drive performance in  the future.