[Techtalk] Repartitioning advice

[Akkana Peck]

David Sumbler writes:
> I would like to repartition the disk in a similar layout to my own
> computers.  In other words, I want to shrink /dev/sda2 to, say 60Gb,
> create a new partition of a similar size (eventually for v.20.02), and
> use the remaining 800Gb as /home.  All that, of course, without losing
> any data, and still being able to boot v.16.04.
> 
> What is the best software to use to do this, in a fairly foolproof way?

I usually use gparted for things like that, mostly because I don't
trust myself not to mess things up using command-line partitioners
like fdisk (even though I'm a heavy command-line user otherwise).

But fair warning: on big disks, resizing partitions with gparted can
be extremely slow. I usually end up giving up after 3 hours or so,
and deciding to do things some other way, like just restoring /home
from a backup (of course you're making a backup before messing with
the partition table, right?)

I'm not sure why resizing a partition should take many times longer
than backing up with rsync then copying the whole backup, but it
seems to. Maybe it's just gparted; I don't know if other
partitioning programs are faster.

FWIW, I use the same partitioning scheme as you, with one partition
for the OS I'm currently using, another for the last working one,
and maybe one or two more in case I want to try some experimental
distro, plus a swap partition, then the rest of the disk in a great
big /home partition. I used to have a shared /boot partition, but
grub2 doesn't deal well with that so I've given up on that.

        ...Akkana