Need help to expand data partition on hard drive

[dylpower]

Hello,

I am running Fedora Core 2 on a Pentium IV. I have two hardrives: one with the OS intalled (/,/home,/swap) and another for data storage.

Here is what my fstab looks like:
LABEL=/ / ext3 defaults 1 1
none /dev/pts devpts gid=5,mode=620 0 0
none /dev/shm tmpfs defaults 0 0
LABEL=/home /home ext3 defaults 1 2
none /proc proc defaults 0 0
none /sys sysfs defaults 0 0
/dev/hda3 swap swap defaults 0 0
/dev/cdrom /mnt/cdrom udf,iso9660 noauto,owner,kudzu,ro 0 0
/dev/cdrom1 /mnt/cdrom1 udf,iso9660 noauto,owner,kudzu,ro 0 0
/dev/fd0 /mnt/floppy auto noauto,owner,kudzu 0 0
/dev/hdb5 /kona vfat auto,users,umask=0003,gid=users 0 0
//toti/c /mnt/win smbfs username=dylan,password=xxx 0 0

The device hdb5 is the data hardrive (80 Gigs) which I initially set up as a 40 Gig fat partition. The other 40 Gigs was left as free space. I would like to expand my current partition into the free space. How can I do this safely? I would like to use something like disk druid.

Thanks,

[crackers]

Qtparted is a QT-based front-end to the program parted, which can resize partitions. Before you do that, though - back it all up! Resizing partitions is tricky even under the best of circumstances and with commercial programs.

[imdeemvp]

if you rezise a linux partitions its a given....data will be lost.

[chili555]

You might look at Mondo. I believe you can back your entire harddrive to CD's and then restore, resizing partitions as you go.

[dylpower]

What if I were to just create a new partition in the free space instead of resizing? Is this safer?

Thanks,

[crackers]

It most certainly is! The wife's computer is the file-server and we still have about 50% unpartitioned. Whenever we need more space, I just partition a new chunk and move some files around - and tweak some soft-links to point at other places in lieu of the directory that was there, if necessary.

[dylpower]

How do I do this? Should I use something like QT parted?

[imdeemvp]

yes you can use qparted, also if you have knoppix you can use it to create partions.

[dylpower]

Thanks, I'll take a look!

[Dog-One]

The wife's computer is the file-server ...No wonder you're crackers. :p

And see, I thought all this time you used LVM and did things all dress right dress.

[superbnerd]

About LVM, why isn't it the default setup for partitioning? I know it takes more user knowledge to use its advanced features, but for normal use it would be transparent They could use the system normally, but when they want to expand a partiton they could just learn how to use lvm. Plus, anacanda now supports lvm setup and can set it up automatically if necessary.

[Dog-One]

Don't know if it's a complexity issue or what. I've used it for taking snapshots prior to doing backups and it's quite nice. It's also real straight forward to add partitions in to increase volume space. Myself, I'd like to see the RAID stuff get integrated directly into LVM and do away with having both. Should that happen, then someone could put together a nice GUI and make it relatively simple to manipulate disk storage.

[crackers]

And see, I thought all this time you used LVM and did things all dress right dress.
No, I'm lazy as hell and never have learned a jot about LVM.

However, you may have shamed me into it... With FC3 around the corner, I've been thinking about a little disk re-arranging.