AZgl1500 wrote:I need Backups of it in the OEM condition
What do you mean with this expression, I don't understand?
What I meant, is that I made a full Image of the daughter’s laptop with Windows Macrium Reflect, so that Seagate USB HDD already has a lot of stuff on it.... and it is totally a NTFS file format, direct from Seagate.
Regarding to the question about the 6 TB drive. You confuse me there also.
The first picture shows a 6 TB drive, which is filled at less than 10 %. It does not show the file system of the drive.
All of the pictures refer to the Seagate USB HDD, and yes, it currently only has about < 10% of used space on it.
The second picture shows also a 6 TB drive (the same?), but with 500 GB ext4 formatted partition, obviously selected for TS snapshots.
I have not formatted it at all, the 500 gB is data from Image backups of PCs and direct FileFolder to FileFolder copies to that USB HDD. There are NO ext4 partitions on the Seagate USB HDD
What I do not understand: If both are the same 6 TB drive and there exists a 0.5 TB ext4 partition, how can there be another 6 TB partition as to be seen in picture 1?
The Seagate There is NO ext4 partition on the Seagate drive, that is the Toshiba internal HDD for this laptop. The highlighted drive is the one that I want to partition.
To make my confusion complete there is a drive in picture 3, which has only a MS reserved partition and a NTFS partition (size unknown); no ext4 partition to be seen. So this cannot be the same drive and I do not understand, on which drive you want to do any changes.
That is the Seagate drive, the one I want to create a Linux partition on. the MS reserved partition was already on the drive when I got it from the box. I have no clue what they intended it to be used for, I have never, ever, used the Seagate method of backups. I always use the USB drives with a different backup utility.
Now below, is I think what I need to know. You are saying that I can repartition it, but to stay away from "Creating a Partition Table?
So I can give only some general answer: Partitions can get resized; you can use gparted for that. But you have to note 2 things:
1. There must be enough free unused space inside of the partition, which you want to make smaller.
2. This is a type of operation, which can be destructive. Assume a sudden power loss and everything might get inaccessible. So resizing should only be done, if there exist backups for the content of the drive. Be also prepared, that this operation may take hours - dependent from the amount of data on the drive.
Picture 4 means, that the partition on sdb2 is currently mounted. You need to unmount it, before you can do anything with it.
Picture 4 tells me also, that you tried t create a new partition table. Note, that there is nothing left on the complete drive afterwards!
From what you just said, I think that I can partition the remaining 5.6 TB into a Linux partition and leave part of it as the original NTFS partition? That is what I want to do. I would like to end up with roughly a 2 TB NTFS partition for the Windows only stuff ( containing what is on it now ), and a 4 TB partition for me to have full Image clones, and Folder to Folder data copies onto the Seagate USB HDD for my Linux work.
In this picture, the NTFS partition is the one that I have been referring to.
I wish to make it a 2 TB NTFS, and a 4 TB Linux partition. Gparted shows it labelled as "Seagate"