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I have 10 GB space in my /home partition. I am now running out of space in this partition. But I have enough space in my / partition. Is there any way to increase my /home disc space by transferring space from the / partition without any loss of data? I want to shrink my / partition and extend my /home partition.

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This depends on at least three factors: what else is under /, the type of / and /home file systems, and if either or both of these partitions are on LVM and/or RAID. But there are more conditions.

The easiest solution most likely is to move /home to a larger partition/disk.

The difference between FAT/NTFS and most other file system *nix systems use makes 'resizing' non-FAT/NTFS partitions nearly impossible. This is not an operating system specific fact, it has to do with the way disks space is allocated by a certain file system. When a *nix system is installed on NFTS 'resizing' is not a problem.

I once considered enlarging /home, and my approach was to image each partition and restore them on a larger capacity disk, then use the unallocated space for /home. I ended up moving /home to NFS, so I never tested it - but in concept it should work.

There are more work-around, but in your place I would not worry about shrinking any partition - I would be looking at adding more storage, or better yet moving /home to a separate storage - which is a very good system design practice. This is not the last time your /home is going to be squeezed out of space.

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    The first paragraphs are correct, but the bit about resizing is incorrect. Linux easily resizes other filesystem types (I do so regularly), including EXT3, EXT4 and REISER - the only limitation for EXT systems is they can't be resized while mounted, and you need space at the end of the block device. A common solution offered by many distros is to abstract the partitions using LVS, in which case it is possible to shuffle resources about without even worrying about the hard disk partitions. (LVS is really cool - you should look into it if you need to do any kind of disk management)
    – davidgo
    Dec 27, 2014 at 8:51
  • I did not know that, thank you! LVS you say... thanks again!
    – arch-abit
    Dec 27, 2014 at 15:13
  • self correction (typo) - ext drives can be expanded online, but not shrunk online.
    – davidgo
    Dec 27, 2014 at 18:31

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