4 primary disk partitions; none spare to extend, what to do
 

Partitioning issue trying to get Ubuntu on my new HP Mini 110

Windows 7 comes installed. I want to install Ubuntu, dual boot. HP has partitioned the disk with 4 primary partitions (boot,user,recovery,hp_tools).

I shrunk the 'user' partition so getting enough unallocated disk space for the install.

When I try to create a new partition I am told that it is impossible to create more than 4 primary partitions, and that I need to create an extended partition.

It also say's I'll have to delete a primary before I can create an extended partition. Which I'd rather not.

Anyone have a work around for this dilemma?

Yes. Been there. Back up first if you can at all. A windows backup stores the partition table.
/didn't back up eh? all bets are off.

post the partition table as shown in fdisk or the like. It always helps to have the numbers, and grab testdisk's static binary from their website. You will probably need it.

I am afraid you have no choice. Backup all your data, delete one or more primary partitions and create new extended one. Then you can create more logical partitions on that. 4 primary partitions is the limitation of the old MSDOS partition format.

*** post deleted ***

Removed in case some-one read my musings, and thinks it might work. It didn't, and causes loss of data, so better the thought is now gone.

You need either put one more HDD in system, install on USB, use as Live OS or do what above posters said. Here is good article about partitioning HDD you should read.

There is no workaround. This is a limitation of the PCs. You can have either 4 primary partitions or 3 primary and one extended partition. The extended partition can have several logical partitions.

As others suggest, one way is to make a backup and delete one your primary partitions, then create an extended partition.

Another possible solution to your problem is to add a second hard drive.

K.
I'll not bother about the backup, while taking your point, if it goes, too bad. Ubuntu 11.04 is running just fine off the usb, losing win partitions isn't grief. I just thought since I was extorted for them I should hang on to them.

link to testdisk - brilliant! Many many thanks for that. I shall have a play about come the weekend.

Sure. Buy extra HDD drive. ~80 GB HDD shouldn't be very expensive.

All,
Thanks for the suggestions, I think the consensus is that it just isn't do-able. I'm up against a hard limit.

I can't put in another hard drive, which is probably the best solution, because it's a netbook without spare drive bays and external drives fail the "simple, light and portable++" requirement.

It comes down to:
- blow away a partition and install an extended
- blow away the lot and never mind

So be it. *poof* MicroSoft Windows get out of my face.

and again,
Thanks all.

p.s.
Arcane, your link on partitions, good one.

There are several things you can do.

One is to create recovery DVD's in Windows. This copies the recovery partition to bootable DVD which means you then can re-use that partition for something else.

Another option is to copy the boot partition to your Windows partition and then re-use that partition. Check first as this is usually a rather small partition with only a few files used to boot Windows. If those files are on the Windows partition, they will still (usually in my experience) boot Windows.

Then there's the hp-tools partition which might be trashable depending upon your reliance on the super duper extras that came with your PC. check hp's website as they might have online versions.

Once you've got an entry in the partition table free, you can use gparted in the Ubuntu bootable CD to delete the partition and move the remaining partitions around, and resize them, for what you need. For the linux system, use a swapfile rather than a swap partition - there are directions around for this you can find via search. or you could just free up a partition, set up an extended partition to install root, swap, and home partitions for linux.

As noted above, this sort of thing is much more comfortable when done with good backups. You might want to look at clonezilla for a good way to back up your current drive to a usb storage device for this.

So your free space is 6401-28246? Smack in the middle?

You have the option there to delete sda2, or sda3, and make an extended partition in place of them. Then you can type in the numbers again in fdisk, or find the lost partition with testdisk.

FYI, I am in a similar position with my 3 year old hp laptop. It runs linux 95%+ of the time. But others have borrowed it and run windows, and I have installed Garmin & National Instruments software on it for occasional use, as neither are wine friendly. It also switches on the wifi, which is an absolute pain to do in linux, if someone knocks the button off.

I lost boot capacity on my OS_Tools (or whatever disk it was that booted, but who cares? I have a backup of the original windows, and can just revert to that any time I like.

So... the answer is:

There is no work around, one of the primary partitions will have to be removed.
There are a couple of suggestion on how to save partitions and/or partition data before removing it.
My favourite is to plug in a usb dvd drive and create the recovery disks, then the recovery partition can go without loss.

Thank you all for your help and advice.

Similar thread with significant consequences
 

I posted another thread about how I discovered an MBR drive with more than 4 partitions.

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...16#post5299216

A MBR partition table can only have 4 primary partitions (if one of the primary partitions is an extended partition, it would be able to hold inside more partitions). A GPT partition table can hold 128 partitions. My guess is that you have a GPT disk with a protective MBR.

Could you post the output of these commands? (replace sdX with the correct location of your disk)

For example, I have a BIOS computer with a 1TB hard disk, with a GPT partition table and a protective MBR. This is the output of the two commands above on my system: