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It seems GParted is giving problems with FAT32 partitions. I am using the latest Gparted Live Disk from their site.

But whenever I try to resize my EFI system Partition which is formatted using Fat32, I get the error-:

"GNU Parted cannot resize this partition to this size. We're working on"

Now one of the solutions is to install dosfstools alongside Gparted but I don't know how that will be possible in my case since I am using a Live USB of GParted.

Any other tools on linux that can deal with fat32 correctlty. Gparted seems to be able to deal with NTFS correctly.

My current partition layout on my 1 TB HDD is as follows-:

EFI System Partition (100 MB FAT32) 
Unallocated (250 MB)
Windows Drive(199 GB NTFS)
Unallocated (~720 GB)

When I try to increase the size of my EFI partition my trying to merge it with the unallocated 250 MB I get the error that it is not possible.

ng.newbie
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  • What size are you trying to extend the partition to? – DopeGhoti May 17 '17 at 20:13
  • @DopeGhoti 350 MB – ng.newbie May 17 '17 at 20:14
  • It may be a dirty filesystem. Verify the integrity of the filesystem (e. g. with `chkdsk` if Windows is available, or `dosfsck -vVr /dev/[device]` [I prefer to check with native tools if I can] ). – DopeGhoti May 17 '17 at 20:18
  • Without seeing the current state of your disk partitions,it is impossible to tell exactly what the problem is. More than likely, however, the problem is that their is no unassigned or insufficient assigned space adjacent to the end of the FAT32 partition you wish to extend. – fpmurphy May 17 '17 at 23:16
  • @fpmurphy1 Dont worry there is enough space that I checked. I will be providing my current partition layout in the question please check it. – ng.newbie May 18 '17 at 05:14

1 Answers1

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It would appear that you have encountered the following issue in GParted/libparted:

Bug 649324 - failure to move / resize fat32 partitions less than 256 MB in size

A work-around is listed at the end of the bug report.

Curtis Gedak
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    TLDR: "We're working on it" is not true, use another method like other software or copying the data elsewhere and recreating the partition – golimar Apr 04 '22 at 11:31
  • @golimar any suggestions for tools? obviously `parted` is out of the question, `fatresize` is even worse as it won't work with anything <512M – éclairevoyant Jul 11 '22 at 13:48
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    @éclairevoyant I finally didn't really try any tools. Since it's only a few MB I just backed files up, recreated partition and restored files – golimar Jul 12 '22 at 06:09
  • @golimar makes sense, I did the same. was just curious if there really are other tools since I often see mention of "try another tool" for this exact scenario but never saw a specific tool mentioned. seems like it's just not possible on linux at this time. – éclairevoyant Jul 12 '22 at 08:31