I know there're some Linux users in the boards, maybe someone of you can give me a hand with this. Some months ago I installed Ubuntu to give it a try, but like I thought I was going to end uninstalling it in a matter of weeks I only assigned 10GB of space of the 80GB HDD I use for downloads to its partition. The thing is that with the pass of time I got used to Ubuntu to a point that I'm only using Windows for those Windows apps that don't work via Wine yet, but the lack of free space is driving me insane... I'd like to assign the whole 80GB disk to Ubuntu but I don't want to lose all changes I made to the default installation. I installed and removed lots of stuff since I first installed it and it would be a real pain in the ass to have to do it again. :banghead: So the question is, does anyone know if is there any program to make a backup of all my programs and data to put everything back in a larger partition? I was googling for it and tried to use Reconstructor, but I wasn't able to make a backup correctly. :redface: Thanks a lot in advance!
You might be able to make an image of the partition with your data on it and then reimage, but I don't know specifically what program you could use. I'm sure there's something free out there for this kind of thing. Actually, since you probably formatted using ext2 or ext3, you might be able to just resize it using something like a live Gparted disc. This would break an NTFS partition 9 times out of 10, but ext2 and 3 are substantially more stable (in my experience). Make sure you have a swap partition though. It's not *required*, but it's a good idea. I generally try to have a swap partition that is double my system RAM (so for 2gb of RAM, 4gb swap partition). You might want to be a little more specific about your hard drive setup, though. Do you have the root filesystem and home on the same partition, or both on the same partition? If you're using a separate partition for just "files," you might just want to allocate 70ish gigabytes to a "home" partition and keep everything in a downloads folder.
You can use Gparted or any other disk software program like Partition Magic. Just resize the partition to the size you want and it will do it without loosing your original data. Another option you can do is image the drive, save your backup to another medium, then format the drive clean and re-image the drive back to your new (larger) partition. Clonezilla could do that for you.
Well, I think I'll go with GParted since I need the the free space ASAP. Anyway I'd like to format the disk in ext4 in some moment, for what I heard it's supposed to be faster than ext3 and it's going to be the default in most of distributions... Thanks guys!
I'd stay away from Partition Magic. It has destroyed a couple linux installations of mine in the past. Once, I simply OPENED the damn program and it fuxxed up GRUB.
I second this. Once you get the hang of Gparted there's really no need for Partition Magic. Gparted also happens to be free.
I have 512mb of RAM in my machine and a 512mb swap partition and i've never seen more than 30mb used. GParted is an awesome program, I just fire up my Ubuntu install disc whenever i mess with the HDD.
