[ale] what should I do when resizing ext4 partition

[JD]

Sometimes I use LVM, other times not at all.  For example, on the VM-host
systems, I use LVM, but not inside any of the VMs.  The man page for the
resize2fs command explains the limitations.

On 06/10/2013 05:49 PM, Chuck Payne wrote:
> Questioin, are you running LVM? I am just wondering as I never heard
> that you could resize a partition unless it was a LVM. Please let me
> know.
> 
> On Mon, Jun 10, 2013 at 5:40 PM, JD <jdp at algoloma.com> wrote:
>>
>> On 06/10/2013 02:38 PM, Ron Frazier (ALE) wrote:
>>> Hi all,
>>>
>>> I have a machine which dual boots windows and mint.  The 500 gb hdd is mbr with 4 primary partitions, ntfs windows, ext4 mint, linux swap, and ntfs data.  I'm cloning the drive to a 1 tb wd drive with WD Acronis true image.  This will automatically proportionally resize the partitions to the larger size.  I know what to do with windows to make sure it's compatible after I reboot on the new drive.  However, is there anything I should do with mint to make sure it boots properly and doesn't damage the mint os  or other parts of the drive?  As far as I can tell, the swap file will not be changed.  As far as I can tell, the partition order will remain the same, but the boundaries will change.  When I'm done, I'll check it to make sure everything is on 1 MB boundaries, but the WD Acronis program should do that automatically.
>>>
>>> Any help is appreciated.
>>
>> I'm hardly an expert on Windows re-partitioning, but with the new-fangled HDDs,
>> you definitely want to use Gparted or parted (not fdisk or similar tools) to
>> created all the new partitions so they are aligned properly.  With AF drives,
>> you want to be on 4K boundaries, I think. google will answer better.  OTOH, if
>> you use gparted or parted, the alignment you "want" happens automatically.
>>
>> I'd use dd to clone partitions between 2 HDDs. If there is any issue with the
>> source, then I'd use ddrescue.
>>
>> I've resized running ext4 partitions using resize2fs.  Don't remember anything
>> special about using it and haven't had any issues in the years since the
>> resizing and I've resized about 5 times across different machines.  Of course,
>> there was space available after the old size partition to expand into.  Use
>> gparted otherwise - if you need to move partitions around. I keep a gparted
>> bootable-USB drive ready for just this reason.
>>
>> IME, Linux is not nearly as picky as Windows about booting.  I've restored
>> backups to clean HDDs, then ran grub-install to setup the booting slices.
>> Sometimes I like to have 6-10 bootable partitions on "play" machines.
>> Boot-repair is a nifty tool that will locate bootable partitions on all
>> installed drives. It finds Windows partitions too.
>>
>> Anyway, I hope this helps.
>>