From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Fri Mar 30 09:46:00 2007 Return-Path: X-Original-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [69.147.83.52]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 2FB3816A404 for ; Fri, 30 Mar 2007 09:46:00 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from smithi@nimnet.asn.au) Received: from gaia.nimnet.asn.au (nimbin.lnk.telstra.net [139.130.45.143]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id A072A13C455 for ; Fri, 30 Mar 2007 09:45:58 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from smithi@nimnet.asn.au) Received: from localhost (smithi@localhost) by gaia.nimnet.asn.au (8.8.8/8.8.8R1.5) with SMTP id TAA27054; Fri, 30 Mar 2007 19:43:51 +1000 (EST) (envelope-from smithi@nimnet.asn.au) Date: Fri, 30 Mar 2007 19:43:50 +1000 (EST) From: Ian Smith To: John Levine In-Reply-To: <20070330064630.0EED316A510@hub.freebsd.org> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Moving paritions around X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Fri, 30 Mar 2007 09:46:00 -0000 On 30 Mar 2007 02:50:31 -0000 John Levine wrote: > I set up my laptop to dual boot between W1nd@ws and FreeBSD. When I > first set it up I made the partitions the same size, but since then I > found I do a lot more with FreeBSD so I'd rather give it more space. > > So the last time I had to reinstall Windows from scratch, I made its > partition smaller. Now there's a big chunk of free space between > the two partitions. Should I expect the following to work? > > (back everything up, duh) > > Boot from a CD, change the partition table to make the FreeBSD partition > start right after the Windows partition > > Use dd to move down the existing FreeBSD partition data so it starts > at the beginning of the new partition > > Use growfs to give the extra space to my /usr filesystem, which is at > the end of the existing partition That all sounds a bit scary, and I don't know if it might work. > Or should I just back it all up to a USB disk, reformat, and restore it, > which will take considerably longer? You could, or you could do as Garrett suggested, but what I'd likely do (have done) in the same situation is to make a new FreeBSD slice with fdisk, occupying the area you've freed above the 'doze slice, and mount it on, say, /data. Or you could mount it on say /usr/data, whatever. One caveat: if you use sysinstall to setup the fdisk/newfs/labeling of a new slice that's _before_ your boot slice, be sure to write your changes and bail out of sysinstall before it thinks you want to install there :) Cheers, Ian