Tutorial gparted pdf




















Therefore, each partition contains only half the information, hence deciding on what data is contained cannot be deducted from just looking at a single partition in the pair. This should not bother you, as it's perfectly all right. However, you should remember that this can happen - and know what it means. We will talk about this in great detail in a dedicated tutorial.

Another example, this time using the command-line utility fdisk , here's what a RAID layout might look like:. Notice the Linux raid autodetect filesystem. This means that partitions sda1 and sdb1 might be used in a RAID configuration. What and how exactly, we will focus on that in a separate article. Again, do not get flustered if you find this short sub-section too technical. A separate tutorial will explain RAID in detail. To this end, you will have to use other utilities.

For now, though, it is important that you understand what RAID is what it looks like, so you can properly identify the layout and change it accordingly if needed. However, it is different in being able to allocate any which bit of hard disk space into logical sub-groups, known as Volume Groups, each containing one or more Logical Volumes. The easiest way to visualize LVM is as a space-restriction-free partitioning on top of an existing physical disk layout.

In order words, no matter how many disks or partitions you have, you can ignore them and use a higher order of hierarchy known as logical volumes, managed by LVM. Above, you can see an example from the default Fedora 11 installation. Please take a look at the Physical View and Logical View separately. Let's try to understand what we see. The Physical View tells us our Volume Group sits on sda2 , a primary partition.

Logical View shows us what is contained inside each Volume Group, ignoring the actual physical devices. In our case, we have a single Volume Group, which contains two Logical Volumes, root and swap. For all practical purposes, we do not know or care what configuration exists underneath. Furthermore, this arrangement could span any number of partitions. Here's what the same layout above looks like in GParted:.

We have a small EXT3 partition that is used to boot the operating system. You can tell this by the boot flag. And then, we have an unknown filesystem on sda2 , which is our LVM; again notice the flag. The filesystem is unknown because the partition may contain several Groups, each with several Volumes, each with a different filesystem.

So the question is, which of the possible choices should GParted choose. LVM uses a tricky notation. We won't discuss it in detail here. However, you should be aware of the facts.

Remember this when we review different types of partition flags later. The limitation of only four primary partitions is critical when considering a future setup. It definitely forces us to carefully think through our installation needs and requirements. Windows is a good example. To have Windows XP, Windows 7, etc function properly, they must be installed on primary partitions.

To make it even worse, the first primary partition. Take a look at my Windows 7 review, including the partition. Windows 7 ungenerously grabbed no less than three primary partitions for itself!

BSD operating system flavors also like primary partitions. So does Solaris. Take this into consideration when planning multi-boot setups. Linux is far more flexible and can be installed on any partition. Because of this, it is always a good idea to use logical partitions for Linux, when you can, so you do not waste the precious few primary partitions.

So, now we have a basic understanding of what to expect. Let's start using GParted and review real-life test cases. The first thing to do is to launch the application.

The exact location of the utility in the menus will vary from one distro to another. Whether you're working in-vivo or from a live CD, you'll need administrative root privileges to work with partitions. Now, before we use GParted, let's make a quick look of its functions. When you launch GParted the first time, it will scan the existing devices on the machine and present a layout for each hard disk separately.

It will open displaying the information for the first disk as recognized by BIOS. Something like this:. This means you can perform every tasks in two different ways. Partition layout, if it exists, is displayed on a visual ribbon, with different colors marking different partitions and their filesystems. Free hard disk space will be marked in gray. Free spaces on existing partitions will be marked in white.

Partition space filled with data will be marked in yellow, with the visual fill-up bar roughly corresponding to actual percentage taken. The same information is also shown in the table form below the color bar. The second column, Filesystem indicates the filesystem the partition uses, if any. Different filesystems are marked by different colors, so there are no mistakes.

If a partition is in use by the system, there will also be a key symbol displayed near the partition, indicating it is used mounted and that operations cannot be performed on it. Unlike Windows, which separates drives by their letter and treats each individually, all filesystems on Linux are mounted under a single tree, aptly called root. Even if you have network shares used by the system, they are accessed the same way as local files, by changing path into one of the directories or sub-directories.

The Extended partition has no mountpoint, because it is not used directly. It's a container. It's similar to the Windows pagefile. As such, swap is not used manually by users; it's treated as a raw device. Read to and write from swap is done on the partition level rather than via mountpoints and human-readable filesystems.

Size, Used and Unused are all part of the same equation - partition capacity. I believe they are self-explanatory. Flags are interesting. In order to be able to understand what each partition does, operating systems use flags.

One of these flags is the boot flag, which tells the system, be it Windows or Linux or any other, that the particular partition marked with the boot flag is the one where the operating system should use to boot. I've mentioned earlier that by default, GParted displays the first device only. But what if you want to work on the second hard disk? Not to worry, switching it very easy. In the right corner above the color bar, there's a drop-down button, allowing you to change visible devices. The usage is very simple: highlight the relevant empty space or an existing partition and perform the desired tasks.

You can use the buttons or the menu. Our test case is a machine with two SATA disks. On the first disk, we have Windows installed, with several data partitions.

The second disk is currently occupied by a single Ext3 partition. This is an excellent example of a complex system that a new Linux user will face when trying to install the Linux for the first time. If the disk is empty, the choices are rather simple. But what about a disk already used, with critical data on it? Not to worry, we'll have it sorted out. Now, all we need is to decide what our target device will be.

Let's see what we have:. We have NTFS filesystem on the first partition sda1. It's a primary partition. This is most likely a Windows C: drive. It also has the boot flag. We won't touch it. The second in the list is sda2, the Extended partition, marked with lba flag as it is larger than 8GB. These are logical partitions, therefore they start with number 5. Please note sda7 is NOT the seventh partition; it's fourth on the color bar! We won't be touching those either. The last bit of unallocated gray space is used by the Windows system.

Ignore it. It will always be there on systems with Windows. So, it's the second disk we want, sdb. Currently, it has a single ext3 partition. It's most likely a left-over from an older installation or some testing.

The partition is almost entirely empty, which makes it ideal for our games. This is the first thing we'll do. We'll shrink sdb1 to make space for more partitions. Choose the new size. You can type in the numbers or drag the color bar. Now, we will create a new partition in the free, unallocated space after resized sdb1.

We'll mark the free space and click on New. In order not to waste the precious few primary partitions we have, we will create the Extended partition and then place other partitions inside it. Please note I also added Labels to the two newly created partitions, so we can more easily identify them later. Here's our task list:. Please note that none of these tasks have taken place yet.

Until you click Apply , none of the changes will be committed to the disk. This allows you to play freely. You will have the chance to confirm the changes. If you want to change the filesystem chosen for any which partition, you can do it without deleting the partition and creating a new one instead. You can simply format it with the new filesystem you desire. Either via the menu or by right-clicking on the partition, choose Format to. Notice the color legend. Each filesystem has a different color, making it more difficult to get confused.

Sometimes, in order to grow or move partitions or create an alternative layout, you will have to delete partitions. Again, it's a very simple thing. Simply select the partition and click on Delete. It will be gone - still, again, you need to click on Apply to commit the changes. And you can also always Undo the operation. Empty hard disks will have no partition table - no "master" map defining the partitioning layout.

Similarly, if you want to wipe the entire drive of existing partitions without manually deleting each one, you can simply reinitialize recreate the partition table. This is a drastic operation, so be careful when you do it:. This is an unusual setup, but it could happen. Your first partition won't be a primary partition used by this or that operating system, it will be the Extended partition itself.

The concept is the same as before:. You may also want to move partitions. This is not the most common task either, but you might need it. It's just like resizing, except that you specify the value for Free Space Preceding in the options. GParted can also be used to try to fix errors on corrupt filesystems, like after a sudden power outage, for instance. Setting flags should usually be left to operating systems you're about to install, but you can do it yourself, if you want.

Here's the list of all the flags GParted supports:. Wonder what filesystems can GParted work with? It gives you a nice graphical overview of its abilities. As you can see, it can do quite a lot with a large number of filesystems. This section is not strictly related to GParted. It's more of a bonus appendix, showing you a number of useful tricks that can enhance your partitioning skills. Here, though, we will have to leave the GUI behind and work with command line tools.

Inodes are data structure units that regulate how the filesystem will treat directories and files residing on it.

That's a good question. Why would anyone be interested in changing the defaults set by the filesystem. Well, it turns out that some imaging software, like Acronis True Image , can only work with Linux filesystems that use inodes of the byte size.

However, some modern distributions, like Ubuntu 8. This has caused quite a stir among the Acronis True Image users who happen to dual boot Windows and Linux and like to use their product to create system backups of both their operating systems.

The solution to the problem is very simple. First, we need to check what our filesystem currently uses. Last Updated: May 7, To create this article, 14 people, some anonymous, worked to edit and improve it over time.

This article has been viewed , times. Learn more GParted is a free partition editor that can shrink, split, format, and modify Windows, Linux, and other OS partitions. Log in Social login does not work in incognito and private browsers. Please log in with your username or email to continue. No account yet?

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Tips and Warnings. Things You'll Need. Related Articles. Author Info Last Updated: May 7, Download gparted-livecd Put the CD into your CD drive. Restart the computer and it will probably boot into the gparted-livecd. Skip to step 4. If not, then restart your computer again and check your BIOS screen to see if it has boot options.

Press the corresponding key and change it to boot from CD. You may need to access BIOS settings on some computers. Lots of boot lines will flash before your eyes. When the system starts up, there will be a GParted window open. This is to resize your Windows partition. A Drag the bar in the picture that is your Windows partition to a smaller size, or B enter the size you want the partition to be in the "Partition Size" box.

It shouldn't wipe your data if you choose the "Resize" option, as it can only use free space. Yes No. Not Helpful 0 Helpful 3.



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