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Hi,

After getting ssd's for a couple of pi3 installs (to eliminate sd card) I decided to try it on the pi2 running xbian. It still 'boots' from SD, but 'runs' from ssd. Works well, fast and hopefully less data corruption.

Trouble is, I only copied the partition across from usb stick to ssd and that leaves a lot of unallocated space.

Is there a way to expand the root partition to make use of this? The sd card expand in config doesn't work for ssd, nor can I expand it with easeus partition manager. I've seen a few web pages with differing how-tos, but don't want to mess it all up!

Anyone managed to do this and can share the secret please?

1) A fdisk -l of your ssd would help
2) You have to resize partition first. I'm preferring fdisk, so you have to remove existing partition first and then create it again. VERY IMPORTANT: This partition must start a the SAME position. After you did this, save new partition table and reboot
3) after reboot, you have to resize filesystem by running sudo btrfs filesystem resize max /

Btw, another option would be:

1) boot from (old) usb stick
2) plug ssd and make partition
3) run xbian-config copier, select previous generated ssd partition as destination
4) shutdown, remove usb stick, boot again, now from ssd

Nothing secret

Thanks for the pointers. A lot of instructions were for pure raspbian with desktop available, not much use for my set up.

(27th Sep, 2018 02:07 AM)Nachteule Wrote: [ -> ]1) A fdisk -l of your ssd would help

Here it is

(27th Sep, 2018 02:07 AM)Nachteule Wrote: [ -> ]2) You have to resize partition first. I'm preferring fdisk, so you have to remove existing partition first and then create it again. VERY IMPORTANT: This partition must start a the SAME position. After you did this, save new partition table and reboot

OK - I saw some stuff about this but wasn't too sure it would be OK with Xbian. I'll take another look.
With Easeus Partition Manager I couldn't expand the partition at all (works for ntfs a treat though) - So I have an option to format the drive with fat32/ext2/ext3/ntfs/ - But to clone the partition from usb stick to ssd it needs an unformated partition to write to. I guess it's easy when you know, but not when you don't.
So if I get the ssd into one big unallocated state using the full size, create a partition on that (but then what about the swap partiton, how will that be affected?)....Hmmm....

(27th Sep, 2018 02:07 AM)Nachteule Wrote: [ -> ]3) after reboot, you have to resize filesystem by running sudo btrfs filesystem resize max /

Ah, yes, btrfs.... None of the tutorials I saw mentioned this, so just as well I asked here first - But can't I just do that anyway? Ah, maybe not as the fs is limited to the copied size and the rest is unallocated.
I think I need to sleep on this before I do something bad.

Thank you for the info, I'll let you know how it goes.....

Ah, now I know why automagically resize did not work [1]. Seems you copied data partition (sda1) AND swap partition (sda2) to from stick to usb

So, third option:

1) stop swap: sudo swapoff -a
2) remove swap parttion, fdisk is your friend
3) make sure that initramfs is active (I suppose it is) and reboot
4) partition should be automagically resized and swap created again

[1] Resize works only if partition is at the end of the partition table

(27th Sep, 2018 03:33 AM)Nachteule Wrote: [ -> ]So, third option:

1) stop swap: sudo swapoff -a
2) remove swap parttion, fdisk is your friend
3) make sure that initramfs is active (I suppose it is) and reboot
4) partition should be automagically resized and swap created again

[1] Resize works only if partition is at the end of the partition table

Tried this and it didn't work, but after a little more head scratching I realised that I have to hit 'w' to exit fdisk and only then are the changes made.

After that it was easy and now I have......


So it worked! - Thank you soooo much!

(Another pint of your favourite beverage is added to my list!)

(27th Sep, 2018 06:42 AM)Skywatch Wrote: [ -> ]Tried this and it didn't work, but after a little more head scratching I realised that I have to hit 'w' to exit fdisk and only then are the changes made.

Yep, that you have to do

Quote:After that it was easy and now I have......

Code:

Disk /dev/sda: 111.8 GiB, 120034123776 bytes, 234441648 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disklabel type: dos
Disk identifier: 0x0999c332

Device     Boot     Start       End   Sectors   Size Id Type
/dev/sda1              63 233938030 233937968 111.6G  c W95 FAT32 (LBA)
/dev/sda2       233938944 234441647    502704 245.5M 82 Linux swap / Solaris

So it worked! - Thank you soooo much!

(Another pint of your favourite beverage is added to my list!)

I did not expect anything else