Resizing my "Home" partition

[portach king]

Hi guys,
When I did a fresh install of Hardy a few weeks ago I decided to partition my 80GB harddrive, one half for Home and the other for Root. Now I'm realising my Home is running low on space (8GB left) and there is way too much free space on the root (28.8GB left).
I split the drive 40GB/40Gb (or thereabouts). I have two questions really.

1. Can I resize the partitions safely without having to reinstall of format the drive?

2. How much space should I give the Root drive just to be safe?

[smurphy_it]

yes you can resize them... But not while using them.

Basically, just boot the liveCD and use gparted to resize your partitions.

I can't see you needing more than 10-20GB for the / partition. I guess that depends on your usage, programs etc....

[bumanie]

Partitioning hard drives containing a filesystem is never 100% safe. There is a chance ones filesystem can be mucked up, or if there is a power outage part way through the process - basically 'good-bye' filesystem. Having said that, I have successfully done what you are proposing a number of times with the gparted live cd and never lost any information at all. The process does take a number of hours however. As for how large to make / normally 10g would be large enough, but you already have 12g in / - that sounds too much. Depite this, I guess in your case, a 20g / should be enough which will allow you an extra 20g of storage. I would check / and see whether there are any errant files/downloads that should be in /home partition. Back up anything vitally important before doing the re-partitioning, just in case something goes wrong - it ususally works well, but there are no guarantees.

[philinux]

My home is on it's own partition which makes reinstalling a doddle.

My / was allocated 12 gig and its using just over 4 so anything like 8 to 12 gig should be fine.

I'd backup anything important first.

Be aware once you give the go ahead to the partitioner it can take ages to resize.

[portach king]

Hey guys,
Im currently trying to get this done. Im running off the live cd, but Im a little confused. I've cleared up an extra 20GB of "ulallocated space", but how do I merge that with my dev/hda6 (ie. Home partition)?
Thanks again

[philinux]

You expand your home partition to use the empty space you created.

[portach king]

You expand your home partition to use the empty space you created.

That's what I figured I would have to do but it won't let me. The only option I'm basically being offered is creating a new partition with the empty space. When I try and resize the the Home partition it won't allow it's size to go up any further than it already is...

Thanks by the way philinux, you're being very helpful. I hope I can sort this out asap.

[philinux]

I'm doing this from memory as gparted is something I dont play with on a regular basis.

You can see all the partition and the free unallocated space correct.

So you would then right click on your home partition and resize it.
Or do you drag the tags at the end of the partition after you highlight it.

One or the other.

[saldie]

You may have the same problem as I do.
Check out my post here:

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.p...partition+home

If the free space is not next to the partition you need to expand looks like you can't.

[portach king]

Your kidding. That is my problem then. How can I move my smaller partiton to the right then so the free space is beside the partition I want to expand?
I don't need to do a fresh install, do I?