Hello All,

I have recently got access to machine which has 1TB of storage space. 5O0gb is used for Ubuntu, and remaining 500Gb is free.

500 GB;-
Ext 4 Root :- 300GB
Ext 4 Home :- 150 GB
Swap :- 30gb
Boot :- 10Gb


Now additional 500gb is free. (I checked from disk utility)

How shall i format the remaining 500gb - so that it gets added up to home directory or gets created as new partition.

If i try doing format to the free space:-
There are 4 options for scheme:-
a. Master Boot Record
b. GUID Parition table
c. Don't parition
d. Apple partition map


How shall i go about it, keeping the current data safe!!

Shall i create logical volume manager, what would be the easiest approach.

have you tried booting with gparted live cd? gparted is also included on many linux boot distros

No i haven't tried it yet, i just thought of seeking opinion from experts on this forum, before trying out something. Data present in root and home is critical, and without touching it, i would like to make use of additional 500GB. Is there any utility available by which i can add free space available in hard disk to already existing partitions??

If you have important data on that disk you shouldn't mess with partitioning at all. First backup your data. If you don't have a backup your data isn't safe at all, your drive can fail at any given time, the same is true for the disk controller. You also may have a software bug that destroys your data, or a simple user error. So backup your data first.

To your partitioning, it seems not to be reasonable to me. What do you need a 10GB /boot and 30GB swap for? I would also think that 300GB for / is far to much.
Anyways, we don't know how you have partitioned your disk, so please provide the output of

Too large...

It seems to me that your partition sizes are not the best choices. For a normal installation, your root(/) partition doesn't need to be so large. I am running openSUSE 11.4 with the defaut root (/) size proposed by the partitioning scheme at the time of installation and it is 20GB. The partition has filled up with time, but now still has under 6GB of files on it.

For my system with its 4GB of RAM there is a Swap partition of 2GB. If you want to use a boot(/boot) partition, it usually doesn't need to be more than 10MB, but you can make it 20MB, or 512MB. It is /home that will contain your data files and it is there you have use for the balance of your 500GB storage capacity.

If there is some reason that you need more space in one of the directories under root(/) then you can make separate partitions for /var, and the others. This shouldn't be the case unless this is a server.

You might get an idea of what your linux distribution thinks is a reasonable partitioning scheme by booting the installation CD/DVD and running the installation until you get to the suggested partitioning layout, looking and making notes. You can then cancel the installation.

If you want to gain experience in using the GParted partitioner found in most linux distributions, you can download a copy of PartedMagic and practice with it.

http://distrowatch.com/table.php?dis...on=partedmagic

If you do not have any experience with partitioning, you need to make a Backup of all your important files before you do anything else!