Shrinking and expanding partition using gparted in old versions of ubuntu was very fast. Moving a partition was the only time-consuming task and the time depend on size of partition.
In new versions of ubuntu, gparted seems to take a long time shrinking and expanding partitions. I guess it's because it moves fragmented spaces and moving is very time-consuming, so the overall time of shrinking or expanding a partition is shrinking or expanding time plus time taken in moving fragmented spaces. That is huge if we are expanding or shrinking a big partition.
To save time I want to ignore fragmented space. Is there any way to shrink or expand a partition without taking care of small fragmentation using gparted or any other tool?
Best Answer
Put simply, no, you can't. GParted needs to clean up the partitions as best it can in order to ensure a safe and successful resize.
Here is a longer explanation I found on the GParted forums:
Hope that answers your question.