Ubuntu Installation :: New Machine Has 4 Primary Partitions; Unallocated Space "unusable"?
Feb 10, 2010
My motherboard on my old HP laptop died, so I bought a new machine that's running Windows 7.The machine is a Compaq (HP) and has a 250 Gig hard disk. I used Windows Disk Manager to shrink the space Windows is in so I can install Ubuntu in that space.When I start the partitioner it says the free space is unusable. I ran Gparted and sure enough, there are already 4 primary partitions on my drive:
/dev/sda1 = ntfs - SYSTEM
/dev/sda2 = ntfs
unallocated
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May 3, 2010
I'd be very grateful if some charitable person could help with a problem. I have a portion of unallocated space, 15GB, which is situated to the left of all my other partitions (according to GParted). Unfortunately I already have 4 primary partitions. Although I am willing to delete my last partition, I still amn't sure how I could go about reclaiming the 2 portions of unallocated space under one new partition
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Mar 27, 2011
The good news is I was able to shrink one of my partitions to create some unallocated space. The bad news is the unallocated space is on my primary partition, so gparted is not allowing me to use that space to create another partition since I already have two primaries and an extended. Any tricks to do that?
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Nov 20, 2010
I have the following disk partitions from the left side of partition table as of now:
NTFS - Primary windows vista
Extended - 3 Nos. all NTFS - middle one contains data
Unallocated space
NTFS - Primary
NTFS - Primary HP Recovery
My intention is to add unallocated space to the extended partition. Will I be able to use Gparted to do it?
Or can I install Ubuntu in one of the extended partitions and make this unallocated partition the home partition for Ubuntu. I am not able to add new partition in this unallocated space as disk manager in vista throws up an error no free disk space to complete the operation. I read in some forum that OEM installations allow only 3 primary partitions and one extended or 4 primary ones. Is it true for OEM's only or its a universal rule?
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Jun 7, 2010
I was trying to install Fedora 13, on to my laptop. I have 30 GB of unallocated space in extended partition. When trying to install Fedora 13, I got stuck, as the installer says that there is no free space for installation.can convert the unallocated space into free space.
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Mar 29, 2010
I'm installing a dual-boot with Ubuntu and Windows 7. Windows 7 is installed first. However, I also have some Dell proprietary stuff installed on two more primary partitions, which I can't get rid of. Meaning, I have one primary partition slot free. I shrunk my Windows 7 partition by 50GB and booted my Live CD of Ubuntu 9.04. I chose to install, and when I got to the partitioning part, I saw the 50 GB of unallocated space.
I chose to let Ubuntu install side by side, and choose what to let me boot. However, I got some error about too many primary partitions and, magically, my Windows partition got all of its space back, save for 2.5GB. Of course, I got enough errors and I didn't install Ubuntu. I rebooted back to Windows and I had to have chkdsk go through all my files. I also checked when on the Ubuntu CD and I noticed something about my hard drive configuration I have NEVER seen before. it said something about 4 or 5 gigs containing WINDOWS XP! I have never had Windows XP on this thing! What gives? Anyways, where did I go wrong, and what can I do to dual-boot Windows 7 and Ubuntu?
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Jan 19, 2010
Im running a dell studio xps 16 computer with windows 7. Im now trying to install a dual boot with ubuntu. My problem is that ubuntu refuses to create a new partition, claiming that i already have 4 main partitions. According to any partitionprogram run in windows I only got 3. It looks likt this in Gparted (from live cd):
dev/sda1 | fat16 | system reserved | size: 40 MiB
dev/sda2 | ntfs | size: 797.5 KiB
dev/sda3 | ntsf | size: 100 MiB
dev/sda4 | ntsf | 87.56 GiB
The 40 mb partition is probably for some dell recovery stuff. The 100 mb partition is some windows 7 backup, it is also flagged as "boot".. The 87 gb partition is my main windows 7 disk. I have no clue what the 797.5 KiB is for. It dosnt show up anywhere when looking at partitions in windows. I also tried deleting it from ubuntu (live cd) and then booting windows again, and when I booted ubuntu again it was there even tho i deleted it last time. What the hell is this? Can I just delete it and move on with installing ubuntu? Or should I instead delete the fat16 system reserved partition?
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Jun 20, 2010
I had to reinstall my Ubuntu 10.04 system after some trouble trying to remove a FAT32 partition. I reinstalled using the Live Ubuntu CD (not Ubuntu Studio CD) and seems to work fine. I want to know if its normal to have an unallocated space before the boot partition? I installed GRUB2 in the sdb1, not in main sdb. Ubuntu boots fine, but I was wondering if the unallocated space affects it being detected properly by other systems? When I boot OS X I get an error that the HD is not formatted. Previously I was not getting the error. OS X & Ubuntu are each on a separate SATA HD and Windows XP is on a third IDE HD.
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Mar 15, 2011
I've been trying to install Windows7 along side of Ubuntu 10.10, but trying to sort out the partitioning is a little difficult to figure out.
I have Ubuntu already installed Here is the screen shot for you from Gparted. gparted.jpg
I want to use the 72.15Gb unallocated space for Windows7, and I believe that that (Windows) needs to be on it's own partition. I just can't figure out how to get it to its own partition.
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Dec 10, 2010
Although I've seen several threads with the same problem, I have not managed to solve the problem. GParted identifies my /dev/sda as unallocated disk space! The machine a Dell Inspiron M101Z laptop running Ubuntu 10.10 32 bit + W7 64 bit. I wouldn't have discovered the problem until I decided to replace my 32 bit Ubuntu with the 64 bit version, then GParted from the live cd identified my drive as Unallocated space!
I've already tried to use testdisk to write the partition table, but though it writes the table successfully and then it prompts to reboot, GParted still sees it as Unallocated. I've also tried fdisk /dev/sda then p then w to write the partition table, but again GParted screws up for some reason and sees it as Unallocated.
Code:
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Jan 25, 2010
When I boot the ubuntu live cd (9.10) and attempt to install it only gives two options at the partitioning screen. One is to use the whole disk and the other is to manualy assign partitions. I told it to resize one of my partitions and created 18GB of free space. However, it tells me this space is "unusable". It wouldn't let me do anything with it and I used windows vista disk manager to add it back to the original partition. I have one hard drive with four partitions. One is a restore partition, one windows partition, one storage partition, and one that says xp although i don't have xp installed. It might be used by the acer restore program. It's an acer aspire 6920.
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May 25, 2010
i used gddrescure to clone an 80gb harddrive and this is the result ROFL.i guess you can only do this making sure the target drive is the same size, you see i didnt know lol so..i now have THIS problem.can anyone tell me how to turn my unallocated space into a usable 'free' space? i could play with gparted right now but i dont wanna do anything wrong, so if theres anyone who can tell me how to do this.
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Jan 28, 2010
I am having a 250 GB hard disk in my Acer Laptop.
C: - a 65 Gb partition with Win7.
D: - a 150 GB partition with general data.
and 2 partitions by default - a 13 GB and a 3.5 GB one( I guess backup and recovery by Acer or sumthn)
I shrank the D: partition to 135 GB and had made the 15 GB unallocated space to install Ubuntu. Everytime I checked I got the free space shows as 'unusable' in the Ubuntu partitioner. I tried shrinking again with EPM, Win Disk Management and also Ubuntu partitioner. Each time the free space which showed up said Unusable. A friend of mine advised me to defragment and use 'GParted' through the live cd. I did so and when click on the unallocated space to format it said "IT IS NOT POSSIBLE TO CREATE MORE THAN 4 PRIMARY PARTITIONS. If you want more partitions you should first create an extended partition. Such a partition can contain other partitions. Because an extended partition is also a primary partition it might be necessary to remove a primary partition first."
I didnt know all of my partitions were primary! And I dont even want D: to be primary. It just is there to hold some data.
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Mar 20, 2010
my home partition is an extended one, and when i want to create an unallocated space the space will stay in that extended partition. but there is also an 7 gb unallocated space which i want to merge with the other unallocated space. I also cannot extend that partition over that 7 gb. how can i overcome that problem?
i m also uploading a screenshot of gparted.[URL]..
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Dec 1, 2010
I'm trying to install Crunchbang on a partition I made. I managed to resize my Ubuntu for space to install Crunchbang (which essentially is another Linux OS).I currently have Ubuntu 10.10 and Win7 currently installed. The error I get in GParted is the one above in the title. I know there is a way to install a third OS but this problem is killing me. I need some to help my step-by-step. I'm not that bright when comes to technical terms and writing stuff in the terminal. My current filing system:
Disk /dev/sda: 500.1 GB, 500107862016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 60801 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
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Sep 12, 2015
I just bought a new HP desktop, and I want to install Debian on the hard drive. I ran the Windows program on the Debian CD to start the install.
I selected Manual drive setting, and resized the large C: partition to 50 GB. I want to install Debian in some of the free space, only their isn''t any free space! The 400+ GB I took out of the C: partition is labeled "unusable" instead of "free space."
If I double click the unusable space, I am just given the cylinder/head/sector numbers. How I can make that space usable?
I would boot my Gparted CD, but I don't know how to get to the BIOS. The boot screen goes right to Windows without showing me the key to get to the BIOS. I tried hitting DEL, but to no effect. Do you know what the HP computers use to interrupt the boot?
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Jun 21, 2010
I'm trying to install Ubuntu, Windows 7, Meego, and Android x86 for a project. Here is what I have done so far: Partition the drive into 4 primary partitions of equal size (10gb each). Install Windows7, Android, and Meego onto separate partitions, in that order. Then, install Ubuntu, hoping that GRUB automatically detects the other OS's and creates entries for them. Unfortunately, the only entries in GRUB are for Ubuntu and Windows 7. How do I get to the other 2 OS's (Android and Meego) to show up?
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May 9, 2011
I have first installed Windows7 to sda2 (sda1 being the MBR). Then I installed Ubuntu as follows: sda3 /boot, sda5 swap (sda4 being the Extended partition), sda6 /, sda7 /home. So far so good. Windows and Ubuntu worked fine. I also planned to create another partition for data and two more partitions for Arch Linux. And here is the problem.I just assumed that the Extended partitions were created logical but actually they are also primary. So, as things stand, all my 7 partitions are primary and I cannot create any more partitions.I must've erred somewhere during the Ubuntu installation. Is it possible ti change the Extended partitions into logical, without affecting all the stuff within? Any ideas? Otherwise I will have to delete everything after Windows and install Ubuntu again, making sure that I create logical partitions in the Extended part
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Jul 28, 2010
I would like to combine my Linux partition (/sda3) and /sad1 to give me more disc space. I would also like to combine the two unallocated partitions to install a Windows 7 dual-boot with Ubuntu. How would I do that without totally raping my current Ubuntu install?
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May 15, 2010
On a certain computer, I had four primary partitions. The person who installed the Windows 7 on the computer made two partitions for the Windows (sda1 and sda2). Then I made another two primary partitions (sda3 and sda4). sda3 was empty. sda4 is an extended partition that contained the /swap, and /.According to someone else, some viruses get in on the Windows partitions and can then get over to the Linux partitions if they are primary and right after the Windows partitions, or something like that. This person suggested that I create sda3 when I install Linux(SLES 10), but to install Linux on sda4. Then later I can change sda3 to secondary.So I tried this, and the Linux installation went fine.
I decided to change sda3 before I load the application software onto the computer.So I put the GParted CD in, but to my surprise I realised that the harddisk was actually 1 TB, and not 500 GB as I thought. So I had extra space to the right of sda4. I wasn't quite sure what to do with sda3. I thought that perhaps it would be better to unallocate sda3, move the current sda4 to the left, and then make another primary partition on the right of sda4, or just stretch sda4 both ways.Anycase, I unallocated sda3, and just left sda4 as it was.Hm, perhaps you can anticipate the end of the story. I removed the GParted CD, and restarted the computer, but now the computer doesn't let me choose whether I want to boot into Linux or Windows. Um, it doesn't boot at all from the harddisk.
I know it's dangerous to play with partitions, but sometimes the job won't be done if you are too afraid of doing anything, and I dare say you won't learn anything either. There was nothing on sda3, so I didn't think it would have nasty after effects. There isn't any important data on this computer yet, it was two new installations of Windows and Linux. So I guess I could format the harddisk and just reinstall everything, but I would like to learn what goes on underneath the surface.
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Jul 12, 2010
I'm setting up my laptop to dual boot (default Vista installation and Ubuntu). There's also a possibility I may add XP later as a triple boot.
My laptop came with two partitions already, the second one labelled "Recovery". I was planning on adding three partitions, one for the Ubuntu installation, one for Swap, and one for storing my files (accessible to both OSs). However, this would be five partitions (or six, if I add XP later).
I've never had to deal with this many partitions before and just learned about the maximum of four primary partitions.
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Mar 28, 2010
I've installed Arch Linux onto my Western Digital SATA drive.I love it, best ever, however, I need the fglrx proprietry driver for better 3-d performace, and decided to create a new partition. I decided to install Linux Mint.Sadly, in all my noobishness, I forgot about the 4 primary partition limit (oops!) and as I have /, /home, swap, and /boot partitions (all primary) already installed, I have run into a bit of a problem.I resized my /home partition (almost 500GB) to about 225, and was then told I have over 200GB unusable space. Is it possible for me to change at least 1 of my primary partitions to logical partitions AND keep all the data intact (AND edit the arch configuration so that it'll still work) so I can install a second linux? I sincerely doubt it
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Dec 25, 2009
when i install fedora 11 after windows 7 ,i can not partition and takes errors,it is of primary partitions that is about 77GB that windows 7 had installed on it ,but when i install ubuntu ,it can be installled without any error ,when i asked for this one said me that ubuntu has grub installer that reference to another where for primary partition ,
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Apr 20, 2011
using onboard windows disk management i have made 75gb unallocated to add to the aforementioned ntfs data partition. but, after resizing extended partition, will i need to fix grub even though i will be adding the unallocated space to a storage partition and not the ubuntu boot partition?
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Nov 25, 2010
I recently installed Ubuntu 9.04 and later it got updated to 10.04 via automatic upgrades.
Previously, I having Windows. My HDD had 3 partitions. I installed Ubuntu in the C drive of Windows partition, left D drive as it was (in NTFS, because it had crucial data), and wanted to extract some part of E to be used as Swap. I marked E to be used as swap, but it took all of the drive as swap space, and later when I corrected it so that it takes only 2 Gigs and went ahead with the install, it made that partition unusable.
Maybe because it doesn't allow more than 4 physical partitions.
I am attaching two screenshots of Disk Utility results and Disk Part too.
Disk Utility Report:
GParted view:
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Nov 26, 2010
I recently deleted my partition of Windows 7 and am now only using Ubuntu. The problem occurs when i try to resize my partition to include the now unallocated 370 GB that used to be windows. When i boot from a live cd of ubuntu 10.04 and go into GParted, I right click and hit resize and it will not let me increase the size of the existing ubuntu partition.
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Feb 17, 2011
After installing Windows 7, and shrinking my Ubuntu 10.04 partition, I can't expand my Windows 7 Partition. I see that it is inside of "extended", but I have no idea of how to get it out, and use it to expand my Windows 7 Partition. Here is a screenshot (I'm using a live CD) Also, I want to know why Windows 7 is called Windows XP in gparted, and how to change that.
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Jul 18, 2011
I originally had an Ubuntu partition on my hard drive which occupied about half of it. I installed Windows 7 in the remaining unallocated space and I was planning on doing a grub update from a live cd afterwards. BUT when I looked at my partition table, the space where the ubuntu partition used to be is now unallocated space!
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Oct 3, 2010
I have 2 partitions:
- Partition 1 = xp and ubuntu
- Partition 2 = private matters (movies, pictures, etc.)
I successfully obtained 5 gb of unallocated space from xp I would like to add to my partition 2.
but inside gparted I can't partition 2 to increase, even though I have not mounted XP partition or 2 - I can only make 2 partition smaller and not bigger.
Is it because my swap partition is in the way or? I can not figure it out
Here is a picture showing my partitions: http://img713.imageshack.us/img713/3...reenshotcx.png
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Dec 15, 2010
I want to add unallocated (17.94GB) to ext4 (ubuntu). Is it possible? And how to do this?
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