1 Topic by dovik (edited by dovik 2012-07-25 22:08:23)

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Topic: Resize boot partition on VM

Hi,
Please forgive my question, I am a newbie with GParted and need some help.
I have an XP VM (VMWare), originally configured with 20GB of disk space, a 15GB boot partition and a 5GB secondary partition.
I want to enlarge the 15 GB boot partition to 20GB - I have edited the VM settings to allocate a total of 25GB to this VM.  When I boot from the GParted iso, I can see the additional 5GB of space but no matter what I try it seems I am unable to resize the boot partition (mounted as /dev/sda1).  I am attaching a screen shot of the GUI to help illustrate my issue and what the parition table looks like.  Any help is appreciated, thank you in advance.
http://sdrv.ms/PnTcqv

2 Reply by gedakc

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Re: Resize boot partition on VM

Unfortunately I am unable to see the picture in the link - it wants a password.

Would you be able to provide the output from the following two commands?

fdisk -l -u

where one of the options is a lower case "L" and not the number one.

parted /path-to-your-device unit s print

where /path-to-your-device is something like /dev/sda.

3 Reply by dovik (edited by dovik 2012-07-26 23:10:49)

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Re: Resize boot partition on VM

hi Gedak!
Thanks for taking the time to reply, and I apologize for the problem with the image.
When I click on the link it seems to work ok - I captured and posted additional screen shots illustrating the results of the commands you wanted me to run.  Would you please try again?
If you are still unable to view the images, is there any way you can PM me and I can give you my e-mail address in order to send you the images directly?

Thanks!!!

4 Reply by gedakc

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Re: Resize boot partition on VM

Hi dovik.  The link you provided requests a sign-in so I am unable to see any of the screen shots.

Would you be able to paste the text output from the commands into a forum post?

5 Reply by dovik (edited by dovik 2012-07-29 04:58:34)

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Re: Resize boot partition on VM

Hi Gedak,
Darn, ok, sorry for the trouble.  Can't seem to get this image thing worked out.
May be an issue with my Hotmail/Sky Drive.
I will send you the text of the output on Monday when I am back in the office, but in the meantime, I tried uploading the images to my Google+ account, maybe we will have better luck there.
So, I am trying again:
Oh well, I guess that does not work either :-(
Alright...actually, now that I think of it, I can just type out the results based on what I captured in the images....
For fdisk, under the Device column I have dev/sda1 and dev/sda2, under the boot column sda1 has an asterisk, under the Start column I have 63 and 31471335 respectively.  Under the End column I have 31471334 and 41961779.  Under Blocks I have 15735636 and 52452224.  The ID columns shows both as the number 7, and both are listed as HPFS/NTFS/exFAT under System.
Looks as though the results of the parted command provide nearly identical information - is there something specific you need?

6 Reply by class413

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Re: Resize boot partition on VM

The images are on windows live server. I don't know if it is accessible from linux systems roll
I made a picture from the 4 pictures in the folder and uploaded it on imageshack.us, that surely works for this forum (same for photobucket, too).

http://img641.imageshack.us/img641/6594/gpartedscreenshots4imag.th.png
By opening the link on the thumbnail you can get the entire image. I hope this will help.

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

7 Reply by gedakc

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Re: Resize boot partition on VM

Thank you class413 for posting the images.

To be able to grow the sda1 partition, the unallocated space must be adjacent to the partition.

To do this, undo the "create extended partition operation".
We recommend you make a good backup of your data in case anything goes wrong (power outage, software bug, or hardware failure).

Then move the sda2 partition to the right.  Since the partition was originally cylinder aligned, you should select cylinder alignment again.
Apply this operation, and reboot into Windows twice to permit Windows to perform it's own file system checks.

Grow the sda1 partition into the unallocated space.  Since the partition was originally cylinder aligned, you should select cylinder alignment again.
Apply this operation, and reboot into Windows twice to permit Windows to perform it's own file system checks.

If you run into difficulty, just let us know and we should be able to help out.

8 Reply by dovik

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Re: Resize boot partition on VM

thank you Class413 for helping with the images!
Ok, so I moved the sda2 partition to the right, and now the unallocated block of space appears in the middle.
Before I attempt to reboot Windows twice, I did not see where to select cylinder alignment.  Where do I do this???
Once I make sure I have everything confgured according to your instructions I will proceed to the next step of rebooting Windows twice.
Thanks a million for your help, time, and.....PATIENCE with me :-)

9 Reply by gedakc

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Re: Resize boot partition on VM

dovik wrote:

Before I attempt to reboot Windows twice, I did not see where to select cylinder alignment.  Where do I do this???

This is the "Align to" drop down list.  The default is to use "MiB" alignment.  You can manually switch this to "Cylinder" alignment.

Resize/Move Dialog Window

10 Reply by dovik

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Re: Resize boot partition on VM

Awesome, thank you so much!
Will let you know how I make out.

11 Reply by dovik

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Re: Resize boot partition on VM

Hi Gedak!
Just wanted to let you know this worked perfectly!!!!
Thank you so much for your help, I sincerely appreciate it.

12 Reply by gedakc

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Re: Resize boot partition on VM

You are welcome.  'Glad to hear you resolved the problem.

To help others searching for solutions to similar problems you can edit the initial post and prefix "SOLVED" in front of the title.