How to Safely Resize Root Partition

General system Newbie
1

Hi, I’m currently dual booting EndeavourOS with Windows 11.
I allocated around 46 GB for Root (ext4) when I first installed EndeavourOS, but now I want to give it more space. I shrinked around 80 GB from Windows partition which I like to add to the root partition.

How do I do it safely as to not lose/erase my current installation?
I attached a screenshot of my current partition from Gparted.

Screenshot_20220726_205328_gparted

2

Here’s the explanation for the required procedure :

https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=215547

1 Like
3

First of all you would need to do it from a Live session.
The moving and resizing of the partitions need to be done on unmounted partitions.

Then in order to add that unallocated space to your system partition, it would need to be moved to the right of it. This means that three partitions swap, ESP and the system partition will be moved leftwards.

It is to be noted that there is always a risk involved (however tiny) for data loss or corruption when moving and resizing of partitions.

That is why my suggestion would be to format that unallocated space as EXT4 and use it as storage/data location. You could move your data currently under your home directory to that partition and cosequently free up space in your system partition.

At any rate, I would backup my important data before any attempt at moving around and resizing my partitions.

1 Like
4

The only really safe way to resize a root partition is doing it during install.

Beyond that everything else has some risk.

1 Like
5

Boot from live media.

  1. Copy paste your root partition to the unallocated space, align it to the left.
  2. Delete the old root partition.
  3. Move the swap and efi partitions to the right. This way, any subsequent resizes of root partition will not require moving these two partitions.
  4. Grow the new root partition.
  5. Chroot in, reinstall bootloader and regenerate grub.cfg.
1 Like
6

Thanks for the replies guys. I’m gonna try some of the advices tonight and I’ll update.

7

How do I do the step 5?

8

Follow this for chrooting:
https://discovery.endeavouros.com/system-rescue/arch-chroot-for-efi-uefi-systems/2021/03/
Then this for reinstalling bootloader:
https://discovery.endeavouros.com/system-rescue/repair-a-non-booting-grub/2021/03/

1 Like
9

Thank you very much!
I now have more space for my EndeavourOS! :grinning:

10

This topic was automatically closed 2 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.