Re: partition magic

["Robert G. Brown" <bob@xxxxxxx>]

 "Robert J. Kent" <k96rk01@cc.kzoo.edu> wrote:
>this isn't directly linux-related, but i know a lot of distributions come
>with Partition Magic or some kind of on-the-fly repartitioning program for
>win95.
Partition Magic id commercial software, AFAIK the is no Linux distribution
that ships with it. PM 3.0 is good stuff however, and recognizes Linux, which
ain't perfect but is better than most products. Thhey at least tell you the 
limits and possible consequences of moving ext2 partitions around.

>my question is this: if i have one primary dos partition, one extended dos
>partition, and one linux partition, can this program take some size away
>from the extended dos partition WITHOUT erasing the logical partition
>information?
Yes.

But you won't get away so easily! :))

First of all, there's no such thing as a an "Extended DOS Partition". Extended
partitions are not DOS entities. IMHO you want to say "Extended Parititon", as
both DOS and Linux recognize extended partitions, and logical partitions con-
tained inside extended partitions.

Now, where's your Linux partition? Is it a primary or logical partition?

One of the fime points one learns about PM (version 3.00) is that one moves a
Linux (ext2 filesystem) partition (primary or logical) purely at one's own 
peril. It's lots better to move other stuff outta the way, then use Disk Druid
(a Linux-based tool for dynamic partitioning) to enlarge the ext2 partition.

If you don't move the Linux partition, you can safely do many things with PM,
like shrink or grow partitions (primary, extended, or logical), move and copy
partitions (using other tools that ship with PM 3.00), and play other sorts of
games to allocate space.

Shawn Mattingly <smattin@net-link.net> wrote:
>I haven't used partition magic, but fips (and every repartitioner I have ever
>heard of) can only subdivide partitions...not add them together.
Correct of PM 3.00 (I'm a PM owner). I think the folks at powertools rightly
decided that merging partitions (which has other implications) was to be left
to the native filesystems.

One of the things that makes PM and similar tools so usseful is that they do
not do a lot for each file systemk; rather they tend to treat whole partitions
as data blocks, containers.

If you answer the couple of questions I posed about your disk config I'll
be happy to tell you (either from documentation or by trial) what PM will
do.

                                                            Regards,
                                                               ---> RGB <---