Doing a full install on an SD card and leaving space for an exFAT partition ?

[Usjes]

Hi,
I want to do a full Linux install on an SD card for a laptop with no hard drive. I dont want to use the whole SD card for the linux install though I would like to use some of it for a separate partition that could be read by windows also. I have done this previously with a USB key. The SD card currently shows one exFAT partition and I was expecting to:
1. Use Gparted to shrink the exFAT patition
2. Create a linux patition in the freed up space
3. From a linux live USB do a full install onto the linux partition on the SD card
I ran into problems at step 1 though, my version of gparted cannot resize exFAT partitions so I tried doing it on Windows, but all I have is windows7 and the disk utility there also can't resize exFAT.
So, I'm wondering if there is something special about an SD card as I don't remember having any difficulties when I did this previously with a USB key.
Can I simply do the install from the linux live to the entire SD and then subsequently shrink this linux partition and create an exFAT partition in the freed up space using gparted, ie if gparted can't shrink an existing exFAT partition can it create a new one ?
Is there any danger that I could end up bricking my SD card ? Or can I always just reformat it with Gparted or the disk utility in Windows7 ?

Thanks,

Usjes

 

[Brickwizard]

I want to do a full Linux install on an SD card for a laptop with no hard drive.

I have done this on several occasions,
first make sure you have the right format SD card, not all formats are suitable for this use
I always do a full installation of Linux, Although Linux prefers the safer EXT4 file system you can on some distributions choose to format the complete drive fats/x-fats at the partition stage

 

[Usjes]

first make sure you have the right format SD card, not all formats are suitable for this use

would you care to elaborate, which SD cards are suitable for this ?

 

[Brickwizard]

you will have to check each one individually, if you search amazon and read the description you are looking for one that states suitable for personal computer as this one dose

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Integral-Class-UltimaPro-SDXC-Memory/dp/B014HI9ED4?refinements=p_n_condition-type%3A12319067031%2Cp_n_feature_browse-bin%3A411646031

 

[KGIII]

SD cards have different classes. The price difference isn't huge. Class 10 is ideal for this sort of stuff.

 

[ML_113]

1. Use Gparted to shrink the exFAT patition

I find that backing up the data then start from scratch is faster than playing with resizing partitions.

 

[wizardfromoz]

...ie if gparted can't shrink an existing exFAT partition can it create a new one ?

I don't have an SD card to try this with, but it can with an existing EXT4 partition on a PC or laptop.

I formatted a blank EXT4 20 GB partition to exFAT using Gparted, and then back to EXT4, no problems. As a followup with the change back, I went into flags and removed the flag for msftdata that the first part had placed on it.

HTH

Wizard

 

[camtaf]

Doing an installation of Linux, you can decide how much to use, then install to that partition, once up & running, partition the rest of the space, & put whatever filesystem you want on it for your data.