Resize extended partition?

[rabidmonkey]

I've got an interesting problem. Is it possible to resize an extended partition such that it is the only partition on a drive? Here's my current layout:

Disk /dev/hda: 250.0 GB, 250059350016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 30401 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/hda1   *           1          64      514048+  83  Linux
/dev/hda2              65        6438    51199155   83  Linux
/dev/hda3            6439        8988    20482875   83  Linux
/dev/hda4            8989       30401   171999922+   5  Extended
/dev/hda5            8989        9434     3582463+  83  Linux
/dev/hda6            9435        9561     1020096   82  Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/hda7            9562       30401   167397268+  83  Linux

Disk /dev/hdb: 60.0 GB, 60022480896 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 7297 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/hdb1   *           1        7169    57584961   83  Linux
/dev/hdb2            7170        7297     1028160   82  Linux swap / Solaris

/dev/hdb is an old disk that I'm recycling, and it is not currently mounted. What I'd like to do is take /dev/hda7 and expand it across all of /dev/hda. The other partitions in place on /dev/hda would be resized and placed on /dev/hdb. I've seen several documents showing how to expand an extended partition within the /dev/hda4 group, but nothing about making one a standard partition covering the whole disk. What I think might be possible is to shrink/delete /dev/hda[1-3], grow /dev/hda4 to encompass as much space as possible, delete /dev/hda[5,6], and grow /dev/hda7 to take all of the space allocated under /dev/hda4.

Is this possible, or am I insane? The goal of this is to preserve the data currently present on /dev/hda7 while giving it more room. Of course, I couldn't do something logical like have this running on LVM, so I'm stuck using standard partitioning tools. I have a LiveCD of GParted available, so dealing with mounted filesystems is not an issue.

Thanks!

[stevea]

Yes you can do this. "gparted" is a great tool for the job.

Partition hba and "cp -a" the files from hdaX to hdbX, then use gparted to delete that old partitions, then to expand the current.
Gparted takes care of extending the ext2/3 file system too - not just the partition.


Please note that all *logical* partitions (e.g hda7) exist within an extended partition (hda4), so you will have one extended (and the name defaults to hda4) and one logical.

[rabidmonkey]

Cool! I'm not worried about data on any of the other partitions - this is part of finally upgrading from FC6 to F8, so I'm planning on just blowing them away. On a related note, might this be possible in the partitioning software used during installation, or should I stick with using GParted?

[ivancat]

yes, you can extend hda7 during the installation (manual configuration)