Support for my partitions

[Salomon]

Hello, good afternoon to all Zorin community members.
I've been a Zorin user for a long time. I've used it many times to learn Linux and have made several mistakes. Now I have this question, and I don't want to break my system, as has happened a few times through my own fault.
Anyway, I have a partition (3) that's unmounted and practically useless, as I have to keep remounting it if I want to write anything. Please find the attachments below (sorry for the Portuguese text), and I want to make it whole with partition 5.
I'm very grateful to everyone who's always been helping me!

[zenzen]

So, you want to combine Partitions 3 and 5 together?

1. Make sure to take whatever files you have in them and move them someplace else, as the process will erase any files in them.

2. Here's a similar example with a drive with 3 partitions, and I want to combine partition "A" and partition "B".

   

3. Select each partition and click on the red button that's on the right hand side. This will delete the partition and mark the space as free to use.

   

4. Select that free space and click on the + icon to create a new partition.

   

5. You will be asked how much space you want to allocate for it, which by default will be whatever amount of contiguous space is available. Since you want to combine them, leave as it is:

   

6. After that you will be asked what you want to call this partition and shown other details like the file system, etc. If you don't have special needs, you can leave the defaults as they are.

   After that, you should have partition (here's I've called it "AB"):

   

[applecheeks37]

Just moved this to General Help as it seems to be more that versus a tutorial. Please let me know if that's wrong.

[zabadabadoo]

@zenzen

So, you want to combine Partitions 3 and 5 together?

Those are not adjacent partitions, so I think not so simple as your example of combining adjacent partitions A&B. Or so I believe.

EDIT: OK. I see from further examination of OP's screenshot that partitions 3 & 5 are indeed adjacent, with partition 4 to right of 5. I did not expect that sequence.

[Salomon]

Thanks @zenzen , I understood correctly! My question was whether I could resize without losing the contents of the current partition. Therefore, I'll wait until the next Zorin version update to perform this procedure. Finally, is there a way to configure this partition to start mounted?

[Forpli]

In gnome disks click on your partition, then on the cog wheel and select >edit mount options. There you can enable the partition to >mount at system startup.

[Salomon]

Yes, friend! Thanks everyone, I just did exactly that. For now, my issue is resolved. Not only did I change the mounting option, but I also removed the notification from the tray. Once again, I'm very happy with the community.

[zenzen]

Yes, it was a bit disconcerting at first

@Salomon

My question was whether I could resize without losing the contents of the current partition.

Ah, I see. Well, the answer is yes but the order of the partitions is very important to avoid data loss. In your example, if you want to extend partition 3 using some space from partition 5 will lead to data loss on partition 5, because when you resize a partition you do so from the end of it.

Following my previous example, here's what happens when I try to resize partition C to make some room for partition AB:

Notice that I do have now some free space on this drive... but it's all the way at the end partition C. I cannot use it to extend partition AB, since there's some other used space in between.
I could delete partition C, resize my AB partition a little more, and re-format the remaining space again. But all the files from partition C would've been lost.

Back to your example, you could've resized partition 3 in a similar fashion: deleting partition 5, extending partition 3 a little bit, and then re-creating partition 5 out of the remaining space. This way, only the files from partition 5 would've been lost, but not the ones from 3.

There are ways around this... but it only gets more complicated and it's usually not worth it. Best to make backup of your files, re-draw the partitions and copy the files back.

[Salomon]

Yes, I understand. Partition 3 could be formatted since it's empty. I was worried that after formatting it, it would remain as P3, so I decided to make the workaround of mounting it at startup. Since this is a very basic technical topic, I won't take up any of your time and will leave it like this until the version 18 update, as I want a clean install. Thank you.

[Ponce-De-Leon]

@Salomon

My question was whether I could resize without losing the contents of the current partition.

There would be GParted a Way. You have to use it in Live Mode of Zorin from an USB Stick, delete the Partition what You not want an then expand the current Partition over it.

[Salomon]

Hi @Ponce-De-Leon good afternoon! I'm going to research this tool live, as I have the app installed and didn't even know there was a live version. It will be a very useful learning experience! My experiences in the Community are truly a lesson with various perspectives and paths. I'm very grateful to all of you.