Need help in disc partitions

Dutch72 · 02-25-2009, 05:18 AM

Hi All,

I would like a little help on my disc partitions:
(I have read some tutorials etc, but the easy stuff I understand and the technical stuff is too technical...)

I have 1 drive of approx. 1 TB but seem to be missing a *lot* of space.

I am dual-booting Vista and Ubuntu 8.10. I installed Vista first and then Ubuntu off the live Cd.

I remember Gparted running during install. It asked me a bunch of questions I didn't understand, so I just went with the defaults and/or automatic settings. Now I am missing a large block of drive space, and I am not clear on what is where.

I have the following:

:

Quote:

~$ cat /proc/partitions
major minor #blocks name

8 0 976762584 sda
8 1 154832896 sda1
8 2 166594050 sda2
8 3 682762 sda3
8 4 1 sda4
8 5 20975809 sda5
8 6 292961277 sda6
8 7 2923767 sda7
8 8 327910684 sda8
8 9 9871911 sda9

Does this mean I have *9* partitions?

If I understand correctly, Linux does prefer some partitions for boot, swap etc. This is fine by me....but 9??

My "Computer" shows the following:

158.5 GB Media (ntfs, This is my windows partition)
170.6 GB Media (ext2, Don't know what this is, contains "dos", "lost+found" and "var", all empty)
699.1 MB Media (ntfs, Contains "$RECYCLE.BIN" and "System Volume Information")
RECOVER (vfat (FAT32) 20 GB msdos, contains recover files for Vista)
Filesystem (unknown, 268GB Free, 70GB used)

This gives a total of approx. 687 GB.

Can anyone answer the following questions?

1) Are all those partitions really necessary?
2) Is there a missing partition of approx 313GB, and how do I get it back?
3) Can I label partitions without wrecking my vista installation? How?

and 4)

I would like the following:

1 Vista partition (158GB is fine)
1 "Recover" partition (as is, just in case I ever need it.)
1 Linux partition (340 GB is fine too)
1 big partition (the rest, 480 GB, should be r/w by all users on both Vista and Linux)

Does this make sense and how would I go about doing this?

EDIT: or would a smaller (20GB) linux partition with a 320GB partition for user files and desktop make more sense?

I appreciate any help

Thanks!
Dutch

syg00 · 02-25-2009, 05:34 AM

mmm - let's see the output from Ubuntu terminal of

Code:

sudo fdisk -l
df -hT

Dutch72 · 02-25-2009, 05:37 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by syg00

mmm - let's see the output from Ubuntu terminal of

Code:

sudo fdisk -l
df -hT

Code:

$df -hT

Filesystem    Type    Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda8     ext3    308G   24G  269G   8% /
tmpfs        tmpfs    1.7G     0  1.7G   0% /lib/init/rw
varrun       tmpfs    1.7G  100K  1.7G   1% /var/run
varlock      tmpfs    1.7G     0  1.7G   0% /var/lock
udev         tmpfs    1.7G  2.9M  1.7G   1% /dev
tmpfs        tmpfs    1.7G  124K  1.7G   1% /dev/shm
lrm          tmpfs    1.7G  2.0M  1.7G   1% /lib/modules/2.6.27-11-generic/volatile
/dev/sda2     ext2    157G   68K  149G   1% /media/disk
/dev/sda3  fuseblk    667M   86M  581M  13% /media/disk-1
/dev/sda5     vfat     20G   12G  8.4G  59% /media/RECOVER
/dev/sda1  fuseblk    148G   56G   93G  38% /media/disk-2

Dutch72 · 02-25-2009, 05:43 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by syg00

mmm - let's see the output from Ubuntu terminal of

Code:

sudo fdisk -l
df -hT

Code:

$sudo fdisk -l

Disk /dev/sda: 1000.2 GB, 1000204886016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 121601 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x792134fc

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1   *           1       19276   154832896    7  HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda2           19277       40016   166594050   83  Linux
/dev/sda3           40017       40101      682762+   7  HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda4           40102      121601   654648750    f  W95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/sda5          118990      121601    20975809    b  W95 FAT32
/dev/sda6           82518      118989   292961277    b  W95 FAT32
/dev/sda7           82154       82517     2923767   82  Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sda8           40102       80924   327910684+  83  Linux
/dev/sda9           80925       82153     9871911   82  Linux swap / Solaris

Partition table entries are not in disk order

pixellany · 02-25-2009, 07:03 AM

So----yes, you have 9 partitions. You are the only one who can tell us how it got this way...

"df" tells us that your Linux root (/) is on /dev/sda8. The fdisk output says that the disk is fully partitioned. To see the free space on each partition, you would have to first mount it.

Another useful command is "mount". With no arguments, it will tell you what is mounted and where.

Note that #4 is an "extended" partition which acts as a container for all of the logical partitions (#5 and higher)

I would set this up as follows:

sda1: Windows, ~20GB
sda2: Windows recovery, ??GB
sda3: Linux swap, 4GB (less is OK, but on a disk this large, you'll never miss the extra)
sda4: Extended--fill all remaining space
sda5: Linux /, ~20GB
sda6: Linux ext3 or FAT32 for shared data**, ~500GB
leave the rest unpartitioned for future additions

**I keep all shared data on ext3 partitions. On the (rare) occassion that I boot into Windows, I use the ext2fsd driver in Windows to access Linux partitions.

syg00 · 02-25-2009, 07:08 AM

That is seriously ugly - I mean *UGLY*.
I can't believe even the Ubuntu installer could mess up that badly - two swap partitions is always a bit suspect; looks like you may have re-run/re-started the install.
If it were me I'd delete the lot (except the Vista and recovery partitions), and start the Ubuntu install again.

Dutch72 · 02-25-2009, 07:59 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by syg00

That is seriously ugly - I mean *UGLY*.
I can't believe even the Ubuntu installer could mess up that badly - two swap partitions is always a bit suspect; looks like you may have re-run/re-started the install.
If it were me I'd delete the lot (except the Vista and recovery partitions), and start the Ubuntu install again.

Is there any way I can clean this up without a reinstall?

Does this make sense:

1) boot using a live CD (either Ubuntu or parted magic)
2) leave SD1 (Vista) SD5(recover) and SD8 (linux) as is, delete and then join all the other partitions
3) create a 4-5GB Swap partition
4) Make the rest into 1 big partition (NTFS)

Or will this not work?

Dutch

pixellany · 02-25-2009, 08:05 AM

In principle, you can do all of this. If you are keeping sda8, then don't delete the extended partition.

Be sure all important data is backed up.

I would still leave some unpartitioned space.

syg00 · 02-25-2009, 08:15 AM

Not worth the effort IMHO. The space is so badly broken up - sda8 is in the middle of nowhere.
I prefer the gparted liveCD - it's a GUI similar to Partition Magic (haven't used parted magic). I'd trash all the partitions as mentioned above and grow the expanded to occupy all the space after the NTFS sda1.
The re-install Ubuntu - doesn't take long.

Plenty of ways to do it tho'.

Dutch72 · 02-26-2009, 05:26 AM

@szg00, I agree, but I tried to fix it first, to learn about this stuff. Also, I found sda8 right at the beginning of the extended partition, which is where it should be, I guess?

Now,I booted from a live CD, ran Gparted and cleaned this mess up.
Its not exactly how I want it, but good enough for now.

In the process sda8 is now called sda6.

sda1 is still Vista ntfs.
sda4 the extended partition.
sda8 is now linux/swap, 10GiB

Currently, I am getting Grub error 15 on boot.
I think this is because Grub is looking for its startup stuff on sda8 when it is now on sda 6. Correct?

How do I go about fixing this?

(As my pc will not boot, I am doing all this from a live Cd.)

Dutch72 · 02-26-2009, 07:54 AM

Done, fixed it!

For those with the same problem, here's how I did it:

1) Boot from live CD.
2) Open a terminal
3) $ sudo grub
4) grub> find /boot/grub/stage1
5) grub> root (hd0,x) where x is your boot drive-1 (sda6=hd0,5)
6) grub> setup (hd0)
7) grub> quit
8) reboot

More details in:

http://www.linuxmint.com/wiki/index....pair_your_grub

Many thanks pixellany and syg00!! I appreciate your support.

Dutch