Non-destructive partitioning is more difficult to do for ext2 than for MSDOS
as ext2 distributes blocks across the entire partition rather than building
linearly from zero. This is done for rotational efficiency, and is a discussion
in itself. FIPS works because it's possible to squeeze an MSDOS partition into
a linear span of blocks easily.
You really should copy the partition to some other medium and restore it from
there when you are finished re-arranging.
That is also the best way to defragment - back up the partition, not using DD
or any other "raw-mode" backup because that preserves the block-level
organiation of the filesystem, make a new filesystem, and restore the backup
to the new filesystem.
Thanks
Bruce
