Hi. Brand new to Linux here, running Ubuntu 14.04. Seriously, brand spanking new. I don't know what half this jargon is.

I am trying to create an additional partition on my HDD. It's a brand new machine and in hindsight I should probably have gone for Windows as the first install.

So the HDD is 500GB capacity, I can see it has a 243mb boot part in /dev/sda1 and then a 465GB part, dev/sda2 with a nested dev/sda5? I would assume I would want to resize this part to create some unallocated space, in order to create a new partition?

I can only create a new partition with 1MB space. I can't create a partition table, either, as there are two active partitions already! Obviously I can't unmount them either.

I have a screenshot but it appears you don't do images on this board.

Besides the fact that the numbers don't add up (243 + 465 > 500), you're right about resizing /dev/sda5.

The slightly odd numbering (1, 2 and 5) and the "nested" partition is due to the way the old MBR partitioning scheme works. Using MBR (which is still by far the most common partitioning system), you could originally have a maximum of 4 partitions. To get around this limitation, the extended partitioning scheme was created, which allows you to create new partitions inside a special "extended" partition.

The "primary" partitions are always given the numbers 1-4, while partitions inside an "extended" partition starts from 5. So on your drive you have 2 "primary" partitions, /dev/sda1 and /dev/sda2, one of which is an extended partition containing /dev/sda5.

To resize /dev/sda5 you'll have to first shrink the file system on that partition, or you could delete and recreate it if it doesn't contain any data.

It's 243MB and 465GB which does work. Use the Ubuntu DVD/flash drive to shrink sda5 to create space for additional partitions.

What is the new partition for? That may inform the decision of whether you want the new partition to be primary or logical.

If it is for a Windows install, it needs to be primary and you may be better off just creating the unallocated space and letting the Windows installer create the partition.

To create unallocated space for a logical partition, you might shrink just sda5.

To create unallocated space for a primiary partition, you must shrink either sda1 or sda2 (to shrink sda2, you must first shrink/move sda5).

You can boot any Linux LiveCD in order to run a partitioning program while sda1 and sda5 are not mounted. The install media you used to install Ubuntu can be used as a liveCD.

Thanks for the replies so far.

I am indeed looking to put Windows on here. I tried using GParted via the Live USB that I used to install Ubuntu but I found the same problem. The parts seemed to be locked and could still only be reduced in size by a mere 48MB.

I then did a bit of googling and some tutorials pointed to using GParted live, i.e. making a bootable USB drive of just GParted, which I did. Same issue, I couldn't resize by more than 48MB!

I am thinking I might just start all over (seeing as I've only really installed firefox and steam so far) and run a bootable Windows USB and format the disk. Then, go for Ubuntu, as most of the online sources recommend going the Windows route first.

Of course, I am open to learning! How can I shrink a partition? Is it the move/resize option in GParted? Because that's what I've been doing

If you are planning to have both windows and Ubuntu on the machine, putting windows on first is usually much simpler. You neglected to indicate which windows version you are planning to use. If it is windows 8, you need to do some reading on GPT/EFI partitioning. If you do an EFI install of windows then you must do an EFI install of Ubuntu.

You haven't posted much for details about what you did so this is all guessing. You are right to use GParted from an external medium as the partition you want to resize must be first unmounted and if you were running it from the installed Ubuntu, that could not be done. Did you unmount the partition in GParted before trying to resize it? Without more details, it's hard to guess what might have happened. Your first partition appears to be a separate /boot partition, sda2 is obviously the Extended partition which does not contain any data but holds sda5, the logical partition on which you have Ubuntu.

From reading posts over at the Ubuntu forums, I would suggest that you either avoid using a separate /boot partition or making it at least 1GB. Many users get their machines in an unbootable state by doing every kernel update available and after just a few months, have filled their boot partition with different kernels. Simply deleting additional kernels to make space often just adds to the problem if not done in the recommended way.

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