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Old 07-05-2017, 08:41 PM   #1
grigory
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How to use an unallocated space?


Hello!
I've got about 65GB of an unallocated space in Ubuntu Desktop 14.04 and I have no idea how to use it. When I try to make a new partition, it says that there could be only 4 primary ones.
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Old 07-05-2017, 08:51 PM   #2
IsaacKuo
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You've got a small ntfs (Windows) partition in an inconvenient location. This is likely some sort of recovery partition. It looks like this was cloned from a smaller hard drive.

To effectively utilize the extra space, you'll have to move or delete that partition. Delete it, and obviously it's useless. Move it, and it will probably still work, but there's a risk that whatever is pointed to it will not like the move. Me? I'd probably risk it.

But before risking it, I would boot up in Windows and see if I could move around/resize the partitions using Windows's partitioning utility. All of these partitions are ntfs, so Windows will be able to see and manage them all. Windows itself will know what it wants to do with that recovery partition. However, it has some restrictions on what it can do with its own main OS partition.

If you want to use gparted (you either don't want to use Windows's partitioning utility or can't), then the steps are:

1) Move /dev/sda4 all the way to the right. There will likely be some very small extra space to the right of it, no big deal.

2) Resize /dev/sda3, which is an extended partition. This is a container partition within which many logical partitions can be placed. Currently there is one logical partition, /dev/sda5.

3) Resize /dev/sda5, or use the extra space within /dev/sda3 for one or more new partitions.
 
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Old 07-06-2017, 08:24 AM   #3
grigory
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Thanks for your reply! No I won't start deleting anything, unless I know what exactly am I doing and what would be consequences of it.
I'd rather lose that 60 GB of free space. It's only about 10% of all the space I have on 2 physical HD's. Especially when I have a dual-boot system with GRUB2 sitting God knows where. I don't want to end up with a dead system where I have to waste another couple of days to get stuff back in order.
 
Old 07-06-2017, 08:59 AM   #4
BW-userx
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this is why planing how to split up ones hdd using MBR is very important before hand.

the first three should have been primary and the forth extended to get use of that extra space.

in your image, what is that really little chunk of space in the green on the right hand side before that unallocated space?

Can you delete it without damage?

if yes then it will become part of your unallocated space then you should be able to just add all of that to your tail end of allocated space, or that will then all be your 4th.

because them two little spaces of green are allocated space that is your 4 total. if you can rid that tail end one on the right side and that will add to the 65 making it your 4th if you allocate it.

but that is a cross your fingers thing, you can see what Gparted says before committing to it.
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Last edited by BW-userx; 07-06-2017 at 09:12 AM.
 
Old 07-06-2017, 09:26 AM   #5
IsaacKuo
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Quote:
Originally Posted by BW-userx View Post
this is why planing how to split up ones hdd using MBR is very important before hand.
The layout of those partitions looks very much like a typical out-of-box Windows 10 install. When partitions are arranged this way, it's because the original vendor and/or Microsoft decided this weird partition layout was a good idea, not the end user.

I have one Windows 10 install, on a dual boot computer, and I noticed that at some point one of the Windows updates decided to shrink the main partition a little to create space for a new partition. Some sort of recovery partition, no doubt. But in any case, it did this without any warning to me or notification afterward, and the extra partition is probably hidden within Windows itself (I didn't feel like digging around within Windows to find out precisely).

The good news is that this mucking around did not touch my Linux partition nor did it break my dual boot GRUB2 setup.

But in any case, this messed up my backup strategy which, for various reasons, was to image just sda1 and sda2 rather than the entire drive. I now know Windows 10 might up and decide to fiddle with the partitions at any time, so I image the entire drive for backup/recovery purposes. (My dual boot setup includes a boot option to RAMBOOT, which puts root into a tmpfs ram disk. As such, it can safely dd image the entirety of sda without any partitions mounted at all.)

My bet is that sda1 is a vendor recovery partion, while sda2 is the Windows 10 main recovery partion, sda5 is the Windows 10 main OS partition (the "C" drive), and sda4 is the weird new recovery partition that that Windows 10 update created.
 
Old 07-06-2017, 10:54 AM   #6
grigory
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The C drive is sda2, actually. And sda3 and sda5 were created by me to keep my stuff in it. sda1 and sda4 weren't created by me and I have no idea what OS has created them (Linux or Windows). Moreover, I used to re-created GRUB a few times after re-installing Windows and thus losing access to Ubuntu. In short, I really have to learn what it's all about before deleting anything. And I have neither time, nor desire to get into that. Like I said, that 65 GB of space nowadays isn't worth much. Though it's a pity to lose it, but... I do hate that W10 does stuff behind your back and then it just lets you live with the consequences. It was probably doing some update and I got a black screen instead of a desktop in W10. MS support here in Moscow couldn't help, so I had to re-install W7 (my original boxed OS) and now I use W7 instead of W10. The only reason I moved to W10 was that it's better for top notch games, like Far Cry 4. Under W7 the discrete video card used to overheat pretty fast and thus it slowed down fps rate rather significantly. But right now I have no time for games, at least till next year. So that's the story in full for those who care to know it.

Last edited by grigory; 07-06-2017 at 10:56 AM.
 
Old 07-06-2017, 11:12 AM   #7
colorpurple21859
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one possibility is to move partition 4 to end of drive, and then make partition 3 bigger.
 
Old 07-06-2017, 11:17 AM   #8
BW-userx
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Quote:
Originally Posted by IsaacKuo View Post
The layout of those partitions looks very much like a typical out-of-box Windows 10 install. When partitions are arranged this way, it's because the original vendor and/or Microsoft decided this weird partition layout was a good idea, not the end user.

I have one Windows 10 install, on a dual boot computer, and I noticed that at some point one of the Windows updates decided to shrink the main partition a little to create space for a new partition. Some sort of recovery partition, no doubt. But in any case, it did this without any warning to me or notification afterward, and the extra partition is probably hidden within Windows itself (I didn't feel like digging around within Windows to find out precisely).

The good news is that this mucking around did not touch my Linux partition nor did it break my dual boot GRUB2 setup.

But in any case, this messed up my backup strategy which, for various reasons, was to image just sda1 and sda2 rather than the entire drive. I now know Windows 10 might up and decide to fiddle with the partitions at any time, so I image the entire drive for backup/recovery purposes. (My dual boot setup includes a boot option to RAMBOOT, which puts root into a tmpfs ram disk. As such, it can safely dd image the entirety of sda without any partitions mounted at all.)

My bet is that sda1 is a vendor recovery partion, while sda2 is the Windows 10 main recovery partion, sda5 is the Windows 10 main OS partition (the "C" drive), and sda4 is the weird new recovery partition that that Windows 10 update created.

if it is a clone of Windows I can see how it might have done that. but I've never ran in to that problem even when I cloned Windows to another drive.

Windows 10 takes 3 partitions recovery, hibernation, and OS. it will take that whole drive if installed on a blank drive and .. well that will be all speculation and not even get him anywhere,

here is a thought, using Windows to move things around.

Code:
How do I delete system reserved partition?
Remove the drive letter assignment from the System Reserved partition and set
the Windows partition as the Active (booting) partition.

Return to Disk Management (reopen, if not left open in Step 2).
Right-click on the System Reserved partition and select Change Drive Letter and Paths... from the pop-up menu.
them end partitions, data or OS? if Data back it up first then delete the partitions. Windows with there not movable data part of it sucks so .. this is a maybe.
You might have already said this or close to it,

rid oneself of that first partition, by instruction above, move the second to the front, that one partition he has tagged 'diag' .. well regardless of how it happened it is just a mess isn't it?

4th should be extended to get 6 more (I think that is the limit)

I go back to my original Idea, getting rid of that little slice if possible that will give him back a free partition to create it all into number 4. because he is not willing to delete move or any of that.
did find this though, he can read and educate himself on this matter,

Windows 10’s hidden hard drive partitions: How to find them, how to remove them

boot is sda2 so what is sda1? can it be deleted? if yes then delete it make sda1 and sda2 into sda1, that frees up a partition too, then that 65 can be added to the back end but that little slice between ,

well looking at the order of numbers, 1,2,3,5,4 someone split 4 then created 5 ahead of it,

that little slice, that has to be 4, add the 65 to it, I'm not sure but I do not think one can do this, but,

take that free space add it to the little slice, that gives 4 total, resize it moving everything to right which should be sda4, then split it again, making that into unused space move between 5 and 4, then just add it to the sda5,
like shifting everything to the left.

because I think sda4 would be that recovery partition because it is tagged 'diag' and 65+ GB is too much for that.

Last edited by BW-userx; 07-06-2017 at 11:29 AM.
 
Old 07-06-2017, 11:37 AM   #9
JeremyBoden
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It will be a lot of effort to move partitions around.

But if you delete a small partition, then you could create a 65GB ext4 partition.
This could be useful for storing disk backups on, if you need to roll back your data.
 
Old 07-06-2017, 11:48 AM   #10
colorpurple21859
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another option is to copy the files off of partition 4, delete partition 4, recreate partition 4 at end of drive and then copy files back to partition 4, make partition 3 larger.
 
Old 07-06-2017, 12:32 PM   #11
grigory
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Thank you all for your replies. But for me it's a little too complicated and I think that no matter what, I would be risking screwing up my whole system, so I would again spend two days of work (at least) to get back stuff in order. I'd rather sacrifice 65 GB of space on HD.
 
Old 07-06-2017, 02:46 PM   #12
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Not wishing to complicate your life if you've already decided to pass on the different solutions described, but I will add my opinion that :

- moving the last primary partition to the end of the "schema",

- growing the existing extended partition to take up the space, and ...

- creating a new logical partition within it (or growing the existing logical partition already there)

... would be my choice. Been there, done that, many times with no negative side effects. Backing up any crucial data is always good practice before partition editing.

Cheers,
 
Old 07-06-2017, 03:42 PM   #13
grigory
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Quote:
Originally Posted by IsaacKuo View Post
You've got a small ntfs (Windows) partition in an inconvenient location. This is likely some sort of recovery partition.

2) Resize /dev/sda3, which is an extended partition. This is a container partition within which many logical partitions can be placed. Currently there is one logical partition, /dev/sda5.

3) Resize /dev/sda5, or use the extra space within /dev/sda3 for one or more new partitions.
Well, you were RIGHT! I used Paragon Hard Disk Manager from within Windows 7 environment to find out that it was actually a Windows recovery partition. It appeared as WinRE. I read online that I could safely delete it. So I used GParted in Ubuntu to get rid of it and then I simply followed your advice, i.e. I made bigger my extended partition sda3, made bigger my NTFS partition sda5 and created a new logical partition EXT4 (used ext4 fs for that). So not only I reclaimed my 65 GB of a free space, I was also able to create ext4 partition. And that ext4 partition is important because I use it as a temporary storage medium when I do Ubuntu backups (I save them on ext4 partition and not on ntfs one). Both OS seem to work fine. Again, thanks for good advice!
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Last edited by grigory; 07-06-2017 at 03:44 PM.
 
  


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