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Muhammad Tariq avatar Ubuntu

How can I merge 2 devices to extend my root partition

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Muhammad Tariq

My root partition is almost full, and I don't have much space in root device /dev/sda5.

I have another device which has space. The device is /dev/sdb1

I want to merge the devices to use the space available in sdb1

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user10489 avatar Ubuntu
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user10489

You can merge partitions if they are adjacent, but not without sacrificing the data in one or both of them.

You can't merge devices this way. The closest way would be to use RAID, but you'd have to sacrifice (or copy off and copy back) all the data. And RAID without redundancy is dangerous to the data. (RAID with redundancy is less dangerous.)

However, you can split the data. For instance, you could move /home to the other disk, and either mount the second disk on the first one as /home or symlink it. Alternately, with /home, you could move just a single user and change their home directory location in /etc/passwd

However, the / partition is tricky to split like that. Only some directories are safe to move; if you move the wrong ones, your system may not be able to find its parts to boot. Either way, /etc/fstab would need to be updated as part of the move.

As small as these partitions are, it might be easier to just buy a bigger disk. These are small enough it might be difficult to split.

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matigo
An LVM would be a safer option to RAID, as devices could be added/removed on a whim (within reason). That said, it would also suffer from the same challenge of moving the OS
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Muhammad Tariq avatar
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Muhammad Tariq
I think your suggestion of mounting the `/home` is better to create some space in the root. How can I accomplish this? Is it okay to replace `/mnt/sdb1_partition/` with `/home` in /etc/fstab file ?
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user10489 avatar
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user10489
If you have data in /home now, you can copy it to /mnt/sdb1_partition/ and rename or delete the contents of /home and then umount that, edit fstab, and then mount /home. It is safe to replace it in fstab, but remember if you don't empty /home before mounting, the data is still there taking up space even if you can't get to it.
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