[gentoo-user] Re: How to move ext4 partition

[Grant Edwards <grant.b.edwards@gmail.com>]

On 2023-09-20, Wol <antlists@youngman.org.uk> wrote:

> Or, assuming the people who wrote gparted have two brain cells to rub 
> together, I'm pretty sure they use the same technique as memmove.
>
> "If the regions overlap, make sure you start from whichever end won't 
> overwrite the source, otherwise start at whichever end you like".
>
> Barring screw-ups (a very unsafe assumption :-), I'm pretty certain you 
> don't even need a backup!
>
> I suspect the man-page even confirms this behaviour.

Not that I could see.  The only mention of "move" on the man page is
in this list of features.

    With gparted you can accomplish the following tasks:
      - Create a partition table on a disk device.
      - Enable and disable partition flags such as boot and hidden.
      - Perform actions with partitions such as create, delete,
        resize, move, check, label, copy, and paste.

Assuming GParted is smart enough to do overlapping moves, is it smart
enough to only copy filesystem data and not copy "empty" sectors?
According to various forum posts, it is not: moving a partion copies
every sector. [That's certainly the obvious, safe thing to do.]

The partition in question is 200GB, but only 7GB is used, so I think
backup/restore is the way to go...

--
Grant