Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2014 May 13

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May 13

Adding partition to disk without losing data

I have a 1.5 terabyte drive that is formatted in FAT. I want to add an NTFS partition to it, but I don't want to reformat it. How can this be done. Please understand that I'm not going to transfer the data that is currently on it over to another drive and then transfer it back. — Melab±1 ☎ 01:02, 13 May 2014 (UTC)

You can do this by defragging the FAT partition and then using a partition table editor to add the NTFS, but for good reason, all documentation about these types of operations urge you to completely back up the data before messing with the disk like that. 70.36.142.114 (talk) 02:16, 13 May 2014 (UTC)

@Melab-1: <nitpick> Remember that the drive is not formatted in FAT, the partition is. </nitpick>

I gather you have one partition on the drive, a FAT32 one, that occupies the whole 1.5 terabytes, and you want to shrink that partition to make room for another one, which you want to format in NTFS.

If you are running Windows 7, its partition management has the option to shrink a partition without third party tools. It doesn't always offer that (even on NTFS partitions), so it might be completely unavailable to FAT partitions. If the command is unavailable, you could use some repartitioning tool, like gParted or Paragon Partition Manager. I'd use the former; I had much more "fun" than I'd ever expected with the latter, esp. during resize operations.

I'd still backup the whole HDD, even if Windows allows to shrink the partition.

Depending on the tool, you may or may not need to defragment the partition; some tools require that the portion of the partition you want to cut off doesn't contain any files (which usually results in an "Operation failed" – which is time-conuming if you booted from a live CD to run gParted), while others will move the files into the portion you're going to keep if there are any.

Still, defragmenting before running the repartitioning tool is usually faster. - ¡Ouch! (^{hurt me} / _{more pain}) 06:44, 13 May 2014 (UTC)

As others have hinted at, what do you mean 'without losing data'? If you mean I have backups of this data but they are hard to access and/or I need to download a lot of it again which is doable but annoying then you it's probably okay to go ahead. If you mean 'this is important data I can't afford to lose', while you're already doing something that's a bad idea, it's an even worse idea to fool around with the partitions which no matter what tool you use, can go wrong (me an many others have personal experience with this). Particularly since it's more likely to go wrong if you screw up and while data recovery may sometimes be possible, this is difficult if you don't know what you're doing (and the cost of paying someone to do it is likely to significantly exceed the price of an external 2TB HD). Nil Einne (talk) 16:58, 13 May 2014 (UTC)

Yeah - so these processes do exist that IN THEORY won't damage your data. HOWEVER, if you mistype something or mistake Megabytes for Megabits or something - of if the computer crashes partway through the work - you can quite easily trash the entire disk. So if you're very brave and super-careful, you can do this. However, doing a backup would be a good idea. Honestly, the cheapest/safest option is to buy another hard drive...you can install both drives and have FAT on one and NTFS on the other. Maybe you don't need another 1.5Tb drive - and smaller drives are significantly cheaper. SteveBaker (talk) 20:10, 14 May 2014 (UTC)

For the record, I have a 75G(!) eIDE(!!) HDD as the "boot HDD" / "system HDD" in my home PC. The other HDD is a more decent SATA II with 900 gigabytes, and that's the one with the games and paging. So, depending on how IP70.36 wants to shrink that partition, installing an old HDD and cloning the partition onto that one might be a better option. For example if he/she has a compatible 460G HDD, that would be enough to copy the 1.5T partition there if it doesn't contain more than ~400G of data.

Unfortunately, many current mobos don't even have any IDE connectors, and many free cloning tools can't resize the partition while cloning (i.e. without writing an exact copy of the original partition first, which would obviously a 1.5TB HDD).

This method would work well without] backing up, as long as you don't get the source and destination HDDs wrong. To be extra sure, boot the PC with only the HDD you want to overwrite connected, and a Windows DVD/CD, and use the setup to nuke the old partition(s). After that, you can connect both and clone — there won't be a wrong way to clone that way. (I don't assume stupidity but I've seen accidents due to similar small mistakes with disastrous consequences.) - ¡Ouch! (^{hurt me} / _{more pain}) 09:02, 16 May 2014 (UTC)

Pull request

Pull request is a redirect to Distributed revision control but there is nothing in that article that defines the term. This has been noted on the article's talk page, see Talk:Distributed revision control#pull request. I'd be very grateful if someone could add a definition of the term to the article, if indeed it makes sense to include it there. Thanks, --Viennese Waltz 07:52, 13 May 2014 (UTC)

I don't have time to edit, but I suspect github documentation is a fairly WP:RS. Here [1] is their page about pull requests. It could be paraphrased into a definition for our page. SemanticMantis (talk) 18:45, 13 May 2014 (UTC)

I commented on the article talk page. Pull requests aren't specifically a Github thing and usually they're not a technical feature of version control. Typically you'd just email the upstream maintainer saying you have a patch for him/her to pull, with a pointer to your repo. Github of course took the "decentralized" out of DVCS so they have a dedicated pull request function, but I think that's anomalous. 70.36.142.114 (talk) 03:20, 14 May 2014 (UTC)

Not sure about it, but maybe a Pull request redirects here. For takedown requests, see Takedown request. line should be added, too.

OTOH, Takedown request redirects to OCILLA... - ¡Ouch! (^{hurt me} / _{more pain}) 05:47, 14 May 2014 (UTC)