Increase disk size and change from MBR to GPT

Question

I have a CentOS server on VMware that has, among others, a disk of 1.5TB, with a single xfs partition using the whole disk. This disk/partition is running out of space, so I need to increase its size to 2.5TB.

So I increased the size on VMware and tried to delete and add the partition, which failed. Of course, the original partition is MBR and the new one must be GPT, but when trying to remove/add the partition, the conversion fails. I've found the original partition is at sector 128 and the new one tries to start at sector 2048, which I tried to modify, but I couldn't (I guess because GPT needs more space than MBR?).

Then I come with the idea of moving the original partition so it starts at sector 2048, convert the partition to GPT, then increase the size of the partition.

Does it make sense? Is that possible? Specially the first part of moving the partition. Thanks!

Update For formatting reasons, here's the output of the suggested command: parted /dev/disk unit s print free

Disk /dev/sdb: 5368709120s
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
Partition Table: msdos
Disk Flags:

Numero  Inicio       Fin          Tamaño       Typo     Sistema de ficheros  Banderas
        63s          127s         65s                   Free Space
 1      128s         3259013119s  3259012992s  primary  xfs
        3259013120s  5368709119s  2109696000s           Free Space

Answer 1

So you have one msdos partition that starts at sector 128.

This is uncommon since the standard would be MiB alignment, starting at sector 2048 (for 512 byte logical sector size).

With GPT, you can still use the start sector 128, that isn't a problem:

# parted /dev/loop0 unit s print free
Model: Loopback device (loopback)
Disk /dev/loop0: 3259017216s
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
Partition Table: gpt
Disk Flags: 

Number  Start  End          Size         File system  Name  Flags
        34s    127s         94s          Free Space
 1      128s   3259017182s  3259017055s

However, parted will complain to you when you create it:

# parted /dev/loop0
(parted) mklabel gpt
(parted) mkpart                                                           
Partition name?  []?                                                      
File system type?  [ext2]?                                                
Start? 128s                                                               
End? 100%                                                                 
Warning: The resulting partition is not properly aligned for best performance:
128s % 2048s != 0s
Ignore/Cancel? Ignore                                                     

If you do not care about MiB alignment (and since your data is already there, you have no choice, anyway) you can just ignore this warning. A start sector of 128 would still be 4K aligned (64K aligned), so that would be fine too.

GPT also stores a backup at the end of disk, so the end sector can sometimes be the issue. However you're lucky and you have 4096 free sectors at the end of your disk, so there is no issue in your case. Otherwise you'd have to grow the disk first before converting to GPT.

If you want to achieve MiB alignment, you'd have to shift all data. The safest way to do so (if you have enough space) would be to just copy it over to a new disk entirely. Relocating data in place can be risky.