In the early days of computing and disk storage devices, file system and partition tools were very basic. You could create a partition, format the partition with a file system, and read and write data to the file system. For a long time, these basic tools were all that was available.
As disk storage grew, a need arose to be able to add and change partitions to better utilize the extra storage space. However, resizing a partition and file system was not possible.
Fortunately a number of people who believed in Free Software took it upon themselves to address these shortcomings. Some researched and developed tools to permit editing partitions. Others focused on tools to resize file systems without losing the contents. These tools were then published as Free Software with Open Source licenses, enabling all of us to use and share this software with our friends, family, and co-workers.
Many of these partition and file system tools are available only as text-based commands. To reach a wider audience, the GParted team saw a need for making these tools easier to use. This resulted in the creation of GParted, which provides a graphical interface to these partition libraries and file system tools.
In the recipes that follow, we will be using the GParted application from live media containing the GParted Live image.
GParted Live is a small bootable GNU/Linux distribution for x86- and x86_64-based computers that enables you to use all the features of the GParted application on Windows, GNU/Linux, and Intel-based Mac OS X computers.
Editing partitions has the potential to cause loss of data; there is always the possibility that something could go wrong due to software bugs, hardware failure, or power outage.
As such you are strongly advised to backup your computer system. Backup, test your backups, and backup again. Believe me, there might come a time when you will be glad you did this.
There are many different ways to backup your computer system. Some people make a complete image backup of their storage devices. Others such as myself backup the data only, with the realization that if something goes horribly wrong then I will need to re-install the operating system and applications from original media, in addition to restoring my valuable data. How you backup your computer information is up to you. The important thing is to make good backups.
Some partition editing actions inherently carry a higher risk for loss of data. In the recipes that follow we will indicate which actions have the highest risk.