[ale] vmware decreasing hard disk size

Narahari 'n' Savitha savithari at gmail.com
Mon Mar 21 13:00:32 EDT 2011


Superb explanation.  Thank you for that.

I never knew the leap from the BIOS  to the hdd.

Lets take this scenario.

First I have only one which is 40gb in size.  I install OS say Ubuntu on it
and I realize that after the entire install and upgrade the installed size
is only 6 gb  I dont want to waste the space, so I resize the drive to have
10 gb and release the other 30gb for something else.

I then reboot, all are happy.

Then I decide to buy a 20gb drive.  I then put that as the SATA2.  I then
use GPARTED to copy Parition 1 from Physical Drive 1 (the 10gb one) to the
Physical Drive 2.  All is well so far.

I unmark the 10gb paritions as NON-BOOTABLE and the 20GB one as BOOTABLE.

I shutdown then unplug the Physical Drive 1 out of the machine.  I restart
the computer.

Now I am hosed.  I have not idea but the machine does not come back.

Does GPARTED not copy the MBR and other data to the Physical Drive2 from
PhysicalDrive1, 10gb partition ?

I always though that it replicates bit by bit from disk1 to disk2.

Kindly correct me/ educate me here on where I missed and what I missed.

Thank You

-Narahari

On Mon, Mar 21, 2011 at 12:45 PM, Michael Trausch <mike at trausch.us> wrote:

> Perhaps a little bit about the boot process of a typical x86 family
> system would be in order here.
>
> When an x86-based computer boots up, it's BIOS runs through a series
> of tests to ensure that things like the processor and memory is
> working.  It then attempts to boot up; it does this by looking through
> all boot devices in order, reading the first sector on the drive.  If
> it ends in the bytes 0x55 / 0xAA (or maybe the other way around, I
> can't remember), then it loads the sector into memory and jumps to it.
>  That sector is responsible for the first stage of the boot process.
> In the case of a hard disk drive, the first sector is actually the
> master boot record, which will then find the active partition and boot
> from it, if it has a standard program.  Of course, any program can be
> installed in the MBR or boot sector of a volume, and so as is usually
> the case in places where software is involved... well, anything can
> go.  :-)
>
>
>
> On Sun, Mar 20, 2011 at 18:56, Narahari 'n' Savitha <savithari at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> > Scott:
> >
> > I resized using gparted and not the vmware utility to do so.  You got a
> > point.  I should do so.
> >
> > David:
> > I did not install a boot loader on the disk.  I thougt if the only os is
> > Linux a boot loader is not needed.
> > Can you please provide a bit clarification so I can do so ?
> >
> > -Narahari
> >
> > On Sun, Mar 20, 2011 at 1:16 PM, David Tomaschik <
> david at systemoverlord.com>
> > wrote:
> >>
> >> Did you install a bootloader on the disk before expecting to be able
> >> to boot from it?
> >>
> >> David
> >>
> >>
> >> On Sun, Mar 20, 2011 at 8:45 AM, Narahari 'n' Savitha
> >> <savithari at gmail.com> wrote:
> >> > Friends:
> >> >
> >> > I have a working Ubuntu 64 bit inside Guest in a Windoze7 host env.
> >> >
> >> > It was originally at 40gb all working fine.
> >> >
> >> > I have since then resized it to 18gb (dont need 40gb) and then I
> created
> >> > another disk of 20 gb.
> >> >
> >> > I then used gparted and copied the parition from the 18gb to this new
> >> > disk.
> >> >
> >> > I marked the new disk as bootable with the flags options of gparted. I
> >> > removed the 18gb drive.
> >> >
> >> > When I connected the new drive by itself and restarted the machine, I
> am
> >> > seeing blank screen.
> >> >
> >> > Any ideas would help.
> >> >
> >> > -Narahari
> >> >
> >> > _______________________________________________
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> >> >
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> --
> >> David Tomaschik, RHCE, LPIC-1
> >> System Administrator/Open Source Advocate
> >> OpenPGP: 0x5DEA789B
> >> http://systemoverlord.com
> >> david at systemoverlord.com
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