Unpartitioned Free Space

IBall · 04-16-2006, 09:05 PM

Hi,
I have a 200GB SATA harddrive, and the following is my partition table, from fdisk:

Code:

Disk /dev/sda: 200.0 GB, 200049647616 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 24321 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1   *           1        2432    19535008+  83  Linux
/dev/sda2           14591       14894     2441880    5  Extended
/dev/sda3            2433       14590    97659135   83  Linux
/dev/sda4           14895       17444    20482875   83  Linux
/dev/sda5           14591       14772     1461883+  82  Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sda6           14773       14894      979933+  83  Linux

Partition table entries are not in disk order

sda1 is a 20GB partition for Kubuntu, sda4 is a 20GB partition for Fedora and sda3 is a data partition, all in ext3.

My intention when I installed these was to leave some free space on the disk, so that I can try out different distros from time to time without overwriting previously installed ones. In theory, this should work (and it did when I installed Fedora after installing Kubuntu - I simply partitioned some of the 80GB of free space for Fedora's /)

I want to create a 20GB partition for Slackware 10.2, however it says there is no free space. This is odd, because my calculatons based on the above are that I have about 60GB of free space. Why am I unable to allocate this free space?

Thanks in advance
--Ian

michaelk · 04-16-2006, 09:09 PM

Even though you have unallocated space you can not create additional partitions because:
1. You have 4 primary partitions and can not create anymore.
2. No free space exists in the extended partiton.

Resize the extended partition to include the rest of the unallocated space and then you will be able to create additional logical partitions.

syg00 · 04-16-2006, 09:30 PM

No I wouldn't do that. The unallocated space is beyond sda4 (a primary).
Attempting to simply resize the extended will overlap sda4 - that could (would) get severely ugly.

For a quick work-around, try using cfdisk to allocate a logical. I'm pretty sure I've used it in the past to allocate dis-contiguous logicals. I suspect it builds "indirect" partition table entries, but I didn't actually go look at the time, and I don't have such a configuration anywhere at present that I can check.

IBall · 04-17-2006, 04:37 AM

Thanks Guys. I should have known about the 4 primary partitions

What I ended up doing is using cfdisk to shuffle around my partitions, so instead of getting 60GB of unusable space, I now have only 1GB which I can afford to lose to save reinstalling everything to get a better partition layout.

Thanks Again
--Ian