Partition-conclusions

[Leonard Chatagnier]

--- On Sat, 10/25/08, Karl Larsen <k5di at zianet.com> wrote:

> From: Karl Larsen <k5di at zianet.com>
> Subject: Partition-conclusions
> To: "Ubuntu user technical support, not for general discussions" <ubuntu-users at lists.ubuntu.com>
> Date: Saturday, October 25, 2008, 12:23 PM
> I have a 160 GB SATA hard drive. When I looked with fdisk at
> the 
> disk the Extended partition was just big enough to hold
> what was on the 
> disk that was about 30 GB. The remaining 130 GB was not
> available.
> 
>         The necessary Extended partition was the problem. I
> am certain 
> that when I made that it was covering all the hard drive.
> But when I 
> looked yesterday it was not that way. So I tried some ideas
> to get the 
> Extended partition fixed.
> 
>         Parted has the ability to re-size partitions but it
> fails to 
> resize a Extended partition. It appears to have problems
> with ext3 file 
> systems.
> 
>         Now fdisk is very capable for all manor of
> partition work but it 
> was found not capable of re-sizing an Extended partition.
> 
>         The Hardy LiveCD has gparted that it uses if the
> user wants to 
> do a manual loading of Hardy. I loaded the CD and then
> clicked on 
> System-Administration - Gparted and up came a full screen
> of the Gparted 
> and I clicked on the Extended partition and it gave me a
> chance to move 
> it or re-size it. I chose re-size and then set the numbers
> to include 
> the entire rest of the hard drive. I clicked Do It and it
> did. It looked 
> good on gparted and later good on trusty fdisk on this
> computer. Now the 
> Extended partition is the entire rest of the hard drive.
> 
>         I have 2 hard drives and both have problems with
> the Extended 
> partition being too small. I will fix that and make a
> partition for the 
> new Ubuntu just above this Hardy. I am not a fan of
> upgrading.
> 
I believe this is the answer to my request for more detail on the fix. Thanks for that.

I do agree with you that starting with a fresh install on a new partition is better than an dist-upgrade even doing it the ubuntu way. For a person with the necessary disk space, I would recommend it.

Thanks for the follow up.

Leonard Chatagnier
lenc5570 at sbcglobal.net