On 26 May 2010 07:29, Rowan Berkeley <rowan.berke...@googlemail.com> wrote: > On Tue, 2010-05-25 at 20:58 +0100, Matthew Daubney <m...@daubers.co.uk> > wrote: >> This is an incredibly dangerous idea. When you're mucking around with >> partitions it is very, _very_, UNsafe to have the _device_ mounted. >> Having been building storage systems for the past 8 months, I've dealt >> with things in terrible states, one of the causes being people >> believing that repartitioning with a volume mounted is a good idea. >> Save yourself some grief, for the sake of downloading and creating a >> live CD, you'll probably save yourself having to reinstall the whole >> system. When I do this on customers machines the process is >> 1. Boot Live CD (or in my case USB as it's a touch quicker) >> 2. Make backup of entire drive (overnight usually due to this being on >> xxTB systems) onto some external storage >> 3. Use gparted to sort out partition >> 4. Check everything is fine, system boots, data is intact >> 5. Return system to customer >> 6. After a couple of weeks of no problems, remove the image. >> This would obviously need to be modified for your needs. >> _DO_ backup your important data. >> _DO NOT_ repartition a mounted device. >> Using a liveCD provides you with a clean environment. There is far >> less that can go wrong. Just my 2p worth of course. But taking time to >> do things properly is usually far quicker than having to undo things >> done badly. Matt Daubney > Thank you Matt for telling me that you have actually seen drives messed > up in this way. I still wonder why it should be so incredibly dangerous > but you have convinced me that it is. >
The why is because other programs could be trying to update bits of the disc as gparted tries to move it. It's a bit like trying to change the wheel on a car that doesn't have the handbrake on - it *might* not move... Cofion/Regards, Neil. -- ubuntu-uk@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UKTeam/
