Help with increasing partition size

Question

First off, I'm still new to linux so I apologize ahead of time for my ignorance. So as the title indicates I need help with resizing a partition. To be specific, I need to add more space to the sda2 partition which is my main folder for Ubuntu. (see picture below) After cloning my old ssd (64G) to this new ssd (240G) I allocated the extra space to the wrong partition during the cloning process. So now I need to get most of the space from the sda3 (Linux-swap) partition and add it to sda2. I already have Gparted on a bootable USB drive to make the changes, but I just don't know how to go about it. Hoping someone can help me out. Thanks.

Picture of Partitions

Answer 1

Since You need to resize sda3 and then move the free space next to sda2 to make sda2 bigger, you're going to have to move partitions around. This can cause problems, but I did it a few times with no real issues.

I did it by resizing my partition from the left to give free space on the left, but that meant for me that I had to move a ~800GB partition, including the free space. That took forever.

You have smaller partitions, but I think the following would be the quickest, easiest and safest way.

• Start out by downsizing sda3 so that the free space following is the amount of space you want to add to sda2.

• Then, you'll have to move sda3 over so the free space is on the left of sda3 and the right of sda2.

• Resize sda2 to take up that free space.

• Apply the operation. (It's going to take some time, but since you have an SSD and small partitions, I'd estimate an ETA of less than 2 hours.)

Hopefully, you won't have any problems. Just definitely do this from a LiveCD or Gparted CD and not from an OS booted on the drive.

If you need any more help, just comment.