Hi Forum:

I have a dual-boot HP Compact 8000 Elite computer, with Win 10 Pro x64 and Linux Mint 19 x64 installed on it.

Before I installed LM19 I googled to see how large the root and home partitions should be. And since these numbers seemed to be a little on the low end I increased them by maybe 70% (root now has almost 19Gb, home 48Gb).

A few days later I did some Timeshift snapshots after which the system told me that for root there was less than 2Gb of space available (G-Parted, 3rd screenshot).

I was able to empty (or uninstall?!) the Timeshift folder (thereby gaining almost 10Gb) and delete the snapshots. A few days later, though, Linux started nagging about low disk space again (now less than 1Gb).

With AOMEI Partition Assistant (Windoze software) I resized (made samller) partition G, "Movies 4", thereby gaining 25Gb. Hopefully, G-Parted (Linux) or DiskGenuis (Windoze) will be able to merge the 2 partitions (25Gb and 18.63Gb). AOMEI couldn't do it because of the ext4 format : (AOMEI, 1st screenshot).

According to AOMEI Partition Assistant the two partitions to be merged are right next to each other, according to DiskGenius, though, they're 2 partitions apart from each other... (DiskGenius, 2nd screenshot).

Last but not least, my 2nd computer, a Lenovo also has dual boot with LM18 x64 and Windoze 7 Pro, x64 installed. I managed to misplace my password , with the result that I can't do software updates anymore. I tried the two ways I found online to change it, for some reasons they just didn't work (one for example was "https://community.linuxmint.com/tutorial/view/339").

Any help with these issues would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks so much.

John aka LinuxDude

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primary and extended cannot be joined together.

I put my windows on a primary partition, mim space for a clean install and some room to grow for updates, and a few apps. extended to Linux for everything else, even a data and ntfs share between the two. I do not use anything other than what comes in windows to deal with their partitions if I needed to. and gparted for everything else. Even my ntfs share partition.

You cannot be running a distro that needs root to be resized because it have to stay mounted.

You have to boot a live distro linux that has gparted with it because the partitions have to be unmounted to move and such.

sda1 , 2, 3, are primary, and you have linux root on primary sda3 with swap, and home on extended. Without redoing it. your only option is to use some off of your movies partition, move the left over to make that free space to move it to your root via a live usb distro with gparted.

taken from your 3rd image using gparted

From a LM19 terminal run this and post the output. Use [code] tags in-line is better than thumbnails for me.

I am unfamiliar with DiskGenius but there are a few inconsistencies with the posted screenshots.

Your root partition sda3 is listed as a primary but from the start/end cylinder information it is contained within the extended partition. Although you shrunk the Movies 4 partition by 25GB I would think that free space should be after and adjacent to Movies 4, it is a logical partition and formatted it as FAT32. In addition the disk pictorial of partitions shows some free space of 66.9GB while the partition listing shows the disk for all practical purposes as completely allocated.

What did not work?

(maybe) easier solution:

• locate the directories that contain the most data (usually media or backups)
• copy the data to the large partition
• rename the old folders
• symlink the new folders on the data partition to where the old folder used to be
• check that everything works and no data is missing in the new location
• delete the old folders

oh, and really delete, do not move the trash bin.
trash bin needs to be emptied regularly anyhow.

1 members found this post helpful.

BW-userx,

Did you create a NTFS partition to use a shared storage for your Linux and Windows installs? If yes, do you auto mount the NTFS partition on Linux?

Thank you!

II got two hdds on my laptop, I use one for my distros, and the secondary for storage. I split the secondary data1, and ntfs1, labeled respectively. then mount them in fstab via /media/ntfs1 and /media/data1

Hi 'BW-userx', 'syg00', 'michaelk', 'ondoho' and 'ceantuco':

Thanks so much guys for all your feedback and my sincere apologies for not replying sooner.

All things considered and after reading and mulling over your feedbaCk I felt it best to just reinstall Linux and make sure I get everything right this time.

With AOMEI Partition Assistant (on Win 7) I created a 90GB partition (with root being 64GB and home 19GB) on a different disk than the C:/ partition is on. If I remember correctly you then first create the root partition, then SWAP and then home. Since LM18 has been behaving very well so far I must've gotten it right this time. And I did take quite a few notes some of which I've yet to transcribe (including your feedback).

I really hope that you don't feel that your feedback was provided in vain. I certainly don't think so. Now I feel I have a much better idea of the ins and outs of installing Linux.

Many thanks again,

John aka LinuxDude

Not sure what that means? If you have a separate root and home you have 2 partitions. Generally, most users will create a much larger /home partition, larger than / (root). The /home partition will be where you generally store all your personal data, the / partition is where the Linux system is and unless you are installing an awful lot of new software, 20-30GB should be more than enough. It's basically a user choice/decision though.

You were probably creating your Timeshift snapshots and saving them somewhere on the / partition. I would think it would be safer or more realistic to put them on a separate drive.

root should be about an average of 10 to 30 GB /home whatever size needed per user.

Hi 'Yancek' and 'BW-userx':

Many thanks for your feedback and sorry for not having been all that clear in my last post .

What I meant to say was that I booted up Windows and created a 90GB partition. When I then installed Linux Mint 19 I used the 90GB space to create three smaller partitions, one for root, one for home and a SWAP partition.

Because Linux had complained before the new install that root had less than 1GB space left I decided to make it much larger this time.

And yes, you're right, Yancek. Linux created the Timeshift snapshots and saved them somewhere on the / partition. Because I didn't know any better I didn't save the snapshots somewhere else. Next time round, though, I'll make use of your suggestion .

Many thanks again.

John aka LinuxDude

Timeshift isn't a requirement - I run it because it might be useful one day & I have lots of spare disk space.
It doesn't use much resources.
Make sure the backup schedule is changed - the defaults cause many backups to be kept.
Mine is:-

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sense you split your system, I do hope you put swap on either end and not in the middle of the three partitions. So, if ever need be you can take from home and add to root, or visa versa without having to worry about that swap partition being in the way.

Yet another reason to use LVM (Logical Volume Manager). If you used your disks/partitions as PVs (physical volumes) within a VG (volume group) you could add another PV on the fly without having redo your partitions and then grow your LV (logical volume) without even having to unmount the filesystem.

There is a problem with using LVM on multiple disks.

An error on one disk can cause a situation in which no disk can be accessed.
Obviously, recovery is possible, but it is more difficult than simply putting separate filesystems on separate disks.