Ubuntu Gutsy Gibbon installer grabs enormous partition
 

A couple of months ago I took the plunge and installed Ubuntu Gutsy Gibbon on my PC, as a dual boot with Windows XP. I installed Ubuntu on my second (250 GB slave) hard disk, which I originally added to my PC as a backup drive for Windows data files. During installation I specified the minimum option on offer for the Linux partition - even that was a quite substantial 20 GB. However, I've recently discovered (using LTOOLS) that it's grabbed 126 GB of the hard disk space! And I had been wondering where so much of my Windows backup space had gone. Where did I go wrong in my initial install of Ubuntu? Maybe someone out there can help other newbies from making the same mistake. And is there a straightforward way to transfer some of that hard disk space back to a Windows partition?

Hi,


I'm not sure to have things clear, I mean, did you use the automatic partitioning option? guided?

For what you tell, I'm assuming that you use something like that and you didn't put attention to disk space while creating the partitions, so, it could happen that the installer saw 'the 250 GB partition' suitable to arrange the linux partitions and you should ended with differents partitions (one for /boot, one for swap, one for /usr....)


However, you can resize the partitions using gparted from a live CD like knoppix (if you have in windows Acronis, that will do it). If you can post the output of sudo fdisk -l it will be clearer to us how the partitions are defined in your system, thus we can made a helpfull guidance.




Regards

Hi

Thanks very much for your comments, Acron_0248

When installing I used the guide at the Techotopia site - see:
http://tinyurl.com/2vxor9

I installed from CD-ROM and in due course got a window saying 'Prepare disk space' just like in the graphic about a third of the way down the page I've linked to above.

I probably selected the option "Guided - use the largest continuous free space". I certainly dragged the slider right over to the left - can't remember the minimum % it offered but it said 20 GB. I thought this was being generous, but went with it. It was nowhere near the massive 126 GB which I've ended up with.

Unlike the example on the Techotopia page, my own "Prepare disk space" screen would have had info about both hard disks, but I can't now remember exactly what it showed.

Thanks again for your quick response.

Hi

The output of sudo fdisk -l is:

Disk /dev/sda: 251.0 GB, 251000193024 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 30515 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0xe024e025

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 1 12206 98044663+ c W95 FAT32 (LBA)
/dev/sda2 12207 30515 147067042+ f W95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/sda5 12207 30515 147067011 b W95 FAT32

Disk /dev/sdb: 250.0 GB, 250059350016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 30401 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x3176794e

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdb1 1 3758 30186103+ c W95 FAT32 (LBA)
/dev/sdb2 19902 30401 84341250 f W95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/sdb3 * 3759 19901 129668647+ 83 Linux
/dev/sdb5 20066 30401 83023888+ b W95 FAT32
/dev/sdb6 19902 20065 1317267 82 Linux swap / Solaris

Partition table entries are not in disk order

So...basically, this is your slave drive:

Primary Partition #1: 26-28 GB aprox. Windows - Fat32
Primary Partition #2: 126 GB aprox. Linux
Extended Partition: 80 GB aprox.
Logical Partition #3: 78 GB aprox. Windows - Fat32
Logical Partition #4: 1 Gb aprox. Swap

For the method you use, (use the largest continuous free space) it seems that, indeed, the installer took out an amount of 127 GB aprox. to use for root system ( / ) and swap, which is not an error of the installer, the error was yours he he. Even when, from the picture of the guide you followed seems to be selected 'hda' in your case I think that you selected sdb (slave drive) and that's why the installer use that amount of space.

But is not a big problem actually, you could resize the ubuntu partition (126 GB) using gparted's livecd, to something like 20 GB if that's what you want, then create a new Fat32 primary or logical partition in the 106 GB 'unallocated space' and that's it.

Your drive could end in something like this:

Primary Partition #1: 26-28 GB aprox. Windows - Fat32
Primary Partition #2: 20 GB Linux
Primary Partition #5: 106 GB Windows - Fat32
Extended Partition: 80 GB aprox.
Logical Partition #3: 78 GB aprox. Windows - Fat32
Logical Partition #4: 1 Gb aprox. Swap

or

Primary Partition #1: 26-28 GB aprox. Windows - Fat32
Primary Partition #2: 20 GB Linux
Extended Partition: 80 GB aprox.
Logical Partition #3: 78 GB aprox. Windows - Fat32
Logical Partition #4: 1 Gb aprox. Swap
Logical Partition #5: 106 GB Windows - Fat32

Using gparted is straight forward so I don't think that you'll have to much trouble to use it, read the documentation about resizing partitions, you should be fine.




Regards

Thanks for taking the trouble to explain all this, and for the link to gparted (currently downloading). The documentation looks useful, indeed indispensable!

GParted did a great job. My Linux partition has been reduced to a more-than-adequate 20GB and I have a new FAT 32 primary partition of 104GB. Thanks again, Acron_0248.

Great :)

Have fun with tux ;)



Regards

Remember the following:

You can't use mswindows disk manager to format FAT32 partitions larger than 32GB. You can do it with Gparted (or other Linux tools).