Upsize partions on new HDD - Dual Boot - 11.04 ON Win7 - Grub
 

Good day Gentlemen, this is my first post in this forum forgive any indiscretions as non are intended. I have been an MCSA for the last 20 years, but recently I have been very impressed indeed with Ubuntu 11.04, having dabbled with and then discarded Susi Linux some five years ago.

My problem my be summarised as outlined below:

Using the downloadable ISO I installed Ubuntu 11.04 as a dual boot on a Win7 100GB HDD on my Lenovo T61 laptop. No problem they both rock and I'm very impressed.

During the installation procedure I selected the largest partition sizes available from the Ubuntu
installer wizard being 25GB Extended split into 18GB Ext4, and 3.2GB and 3.2 GB swaps (I couldn't suss out any way of manually increasing them any further)

I found that the 11.04 Startup Manager application didn't work at all, so I downloaded and installed Grub Customizer 2.1..and that did work after a fashion.. certainly enough to actually effect changes in the grub configuration settings.

Despite this...

Everything worked so well on the 100GB HDD that I decided to transpose the entire disk image to a new 500GB WD Scorpio and make the dual boot my main working disk.

Using Acronis I imaged off the 100GB installation selecting the partition by partition, and retain disk signature options.

I then recovered the image to the new 500GB HDD and everything works beautifully on the new HDD.

Except of course all the partitions are still the same size.

I won't waste your reading time recounting everything that I have done using Acronis Disk Director (V Good) and Gparted (not so good), but needless to say whatever I do Grub won't have it, and I have lost count of the times that I have re-recovered the good image.

Gentlemen.. basically I want to increase the partion sizes to apportion larger partitions to both Win 7 and 11.04 and obviously I'm missing something somewhere.

Fdisk -l -u produces..

Disk /dev/sda: 500.1 GB, 500107862016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 60801 cylinders, total 976773168 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x9f011ed1

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 2048 53247 25600 7 HPFS/NTFS
Partition 1 does not end on cylinder boundary.
/dev/sda2 53248 146956287 73451520 7 HPFS/NTFS
Partition 2 does not end on cylinder boundary.
/dev/sda3 146958334 195371007 24206337 5 Extended
Partition 3 does not end on cylinder boundary.
/dev/sda5 189134848 195371007 3118080 82 Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sda6 146958336 182896639 17969152 83 Linux
/dev/sda7 182898688 189120511 3110912 82 Linux swap / Solaris

Partition table entries are not in disk order

Disk /dev/sdb: 120.0 GB, 120034123776 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 14593 cylinders, total 234441648 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x8755f7cf

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdb1 63 234436544 117218241 7 HPFS/NTFS

You advice and guidance would be much appreciated.

PS If I were Bill Gates I would be looking very seriously indeed over my shoulder at this operating system. I have begun using it in preference to Win7.

I've not done much resizing involving moving the grub2 partition, but I wouldn't expect it to be a major frustration.
I'd suggest you do the resizing, then reboot the Ubuntu CD as a liveCD (run without install), and follow this guide to reinstall grub2. Section 12 - try the boot-repair GUI; I've never tried it, be interested in how it works.

By the looks of those figures - there is some free room @ the end of sda7
& up to the end of the hdd.
But why do you have TWO SWAP partitions? - only one is needed - & about 2Gb in size as well.

Me - I'd delete sda7 & Move everything up, using Gparted to do that.
so - work out the proposed new partitions size(s) & move each partition to the right (up)
one @ a time, & re-sizing each, in turn.
all using Gparted, - from a live_cd.

Thank you gentlemen
 

Thank you for coming back.. I will begin exploring your recommendations

Ha I wondered that as well
 

Pierre2.. I wondered about that too.. but being an absolute NooB thought "oh, ok maybe that's kewl in Ubuntu"... if that's what the wizard has done.. so be it. There was certainly no instance during the installation procedure where I felt that I had actively selected or ordained TWO swap files.

Bill

OK syg000 this was the route to a solution with minimal side effects/ losses
 

Following your link above and reading up first.

I used the ISO installation disk - Install Ubuntu -> select Something Else option to open an excellent manual partitioning facility screen (hereinafter referred too as Ubuntu Partitioning Facility UPF) and that's where the deed was done at least for the Ext4 extended partion (from 25 GB to 178 GB) ...Note the NTFS partition had been previously extended using Achronis Disk Director..and then the remaining 'slack' space taken up using UPF, but I'm certain that the UPF could have handled the NTFS task as well.

Ok; once I had sorted all the partitioning out, all that remained was for me to identify the Root sector.. which I think I got right more by luck than judgement.. and the installation proceeded as normal. With grub being overwritten by the new installation process
I had to enter user details again and a new host name but that was a minor problem, and some of my originally installed applications didn't "we didna get them all back Cap'n" all reappear in the final mix but that too is a minor problem, however all my data did, and Evolution was found to be still configured as in the 'old' installation.

The important thing is that the original Win7 and Ubuntu installations are now sitting on 300 GB and 178 GB respectively and the grub loader is working as it should.

The system had the last "Gotcha" though as the mouse and trackpad completely stopped working in the new installation within five minutes of completeion and nothing would work to get either going again; so I reinstalled again.

Thank you for your help.

SWAP partitions are used for hibernate, so there is a valid use-case for separate swap partitions per installed distro. It all depends on how and when you use hibernate though.