[FC5] Change file system & merge drive without lossing data???

[David Timms]

Deepak Shrestha wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I have one 40GB drive and this is where I have my FC5 installed.
> Besides, I have another drive 30GB drive, which I partitioned into
> 20GB(movies) and 10GB(mp3) vfat (FAT32) filesystem. It is almost full.
> Obviously the reason for VFAT is so that I can use it with Windows
> machine but I want to change the file system of this drive to ext3 and
> merge them into one partition (single drive single partition) to use
> it solely with my FC5.
I believe there is no direct conversion available.

> I know backing up is the good practice but I have no extra drive to
> backup my files. So may be I need to change this first two drive into
> ext3 and then merge them together.
One way would be to temporarily move as much stuff as possible on to the 
FC5 drive. {But so it doesn't end in tears, beg/borrow/scam a hard drive 
for overnight !, or write to dvds}

...
> Gparted shows my drives but no menu is active (do I need to unmount
> the drive first??)
I have used the gparted live-cd, and this is able to do partition 
resizing etc, and does actually work in the couple of machines I have 
run it on.

In essence, you need as much space free in the second disks' partitions 
as you can make. Then resize the first fat partition on the drive by 
moving it's start point to the right (as far as parted will let you).

Then add a new ext3 partition at the start of the drive filling the 
space you have gained. Apply this and reboot, to check that everything 
worked out. mount the ext3 partition and move as much data into it as 
will fit {I think you need to leave at least 10M free or rezing may not 
be possible}.

Reboot with the gparted live cd and repeat this process {depends how 
much space you can free in the {full} partitions on how many times you 
need to repeat. I guess you get the general idea ;)

DavidT