User:Arwen/repartition

Repartitioning your Pinebook Pro

There are multiple reasons to desire a different file system layout. In my case, I want to separate the OS from user data.

Make a backup

Backup your existing OS and data. Multiple times if it's important data.

Understand the risks

If you perform the steps wrong, you could end up with an un-bootable laptop. Even using a SD card may not help. If the eMMC thinks it's good enough to boot, it may not try the SD card.

Read about recovery options

Worse case, you may have to open up your Pinebook Pro and perform a boot with

Using a MicroSD card

This example shows using a SD card as temporary boot location.

Partitioning the eMMC

As user "root", perform the following step. This will:

• Wipe the existing partition table
• Create new, empty GPT partition table
• Create the 3 boot support partitions
• Create 2 identically sized OS partitions. Change as needed.

Note: You can change the sizes of the user partitions, but not 2, 3 or 4. The boot loader U-Boot and ARM64 support information must be installed as specified. Thus, the reserved locations for partitions 2-4.

Here is a commands to make a parition table;

# sfdisk /dev/mmcblk1 --wipe always --label GPT <<EOF
unit: sectors
first-lba: 64
/dev/mmcblk1p2 : start=       64, size=    16320, type=8DA63339-0007-60C0-C436-083AC8230908, uuid=1B5A4130-0958-455D-B9AB-C1F2E232FFF8, name="IDBLoader",         attrs="RequiredPartition"
/dev/mmcblk1p3 : start=    16384, size=     8192, type=8DA63339-0007-60C0-C436-083AC8230908, uuid=D0972B65-4091-4E34-9A4C-8BD949C35E16, name="U-Boot",            attrs="RequiredPartition"
/dev/mmcblk1p4 : start=    24576, size=     8192, type=8DA63339-0007-60C0-C436-083AC8230908, uuid=6C5329F3-9A03-4664-A15C-44E869EDE05C, name="TrustedFirmware-A", attrs="RequiredPartition"
/dev/mmcblk1p1 : start=    32768, size=   524288, type=EBD0A0A2-B9E5-4433-87C0-68B6B72699C7, uuid=3956C6AC-1AC8-4E45-A2A5-FD3CCA60D0CD, name="Linux-boot"
/dev/mmcblk1p5 : start=   557056, size=  8388608, type=0657FD6D-A4AB-43C4-84E5-0933C84B4F4F, uuid=C1565C17-D5C2-410C-892E-7371CB22947D, name="Linux-swap"
/dev/mmcblk1p6 : start=  8945664, size= 56598481, type=B921B045-1DF0-41C3-AF44-4C6F280D3FAE, uuid=E55D2252-DAC4-4EEB-AD41-D47F52B9889F, name="Linux-root"
/dev/mmcblk1p7 : start= 65544192, size= 56598481, type=B921B045-1DF0-41C3-AF44-4C6F280D3FAE, uuid=FB2E55D1-EA3B-418F-BB54-B9E92DF813F7, name="Linux-root-alternate"
EOF