Hard disks are managed by dividing them into partitions. This are but parts of the hard drive assigned to an operating system or function. The partitions are formatted with a file system. This is to establish a form in our files will be stored in the partition. File systems are common in Linux, like ext2, ext3, ext4, (the latter by default since Ubuntu 9.10), the windows as fat or ntfs, and more focused on more specialized functions.

GParted, allowed through my intuitive graphical interface operations with partitions. This may create or delete them. Resize or move the hard drive. Or convert a file system to another.

Usually typically used GParted live-cd. That is, bootable discs that are usually diagnosis or system installation. This is so because normally GParted can not edit a partition if the operating system is in use.

In any case if we want to install GParted in our system is very easy with a few commands in terminal. We will use to install the Ubuntu repositories. Rarely need a newer version than is available in the repositories. Open the terminal from Applications -> Accessories -> Terminal or by pressing CTRL + ALT + T. Copy to install:

sudo apt-get -y install gparted

This includes support for multiple file systems. If we open GParted and go to the View menu -> Support for file systems, see editing options for GParted supports different file systems.

We can add support for some functions by installing these packages:

sudo apt-get -y install xfsprogs reiserfsprogs reiser4progs jfsutils kpartx dmraid hfsutils hfsprogs util-linux

After installing these packages if we return to check on View -> Support for file systems, see the new enhancements added that now supports GParted.

The version currently installed from the repositories in Ubuntu 10.04 is GParted 0.5.1 Lucyd Lynx.

From gparted.sourceforge.net images can be downloaded to CD bootable with GParted included. Very useful.

Very important is knowing what you intended to do, since the issue of hard drive partitions can destroy the information they contain. Whenever possible it should perform a backup of data stored on disk.