[ubuntu-uk] Partitioning Question

Liam Proven lproven at gmail.com
Sat Mar 10 17:12:10 UTC 2012


On 10 March 2012 17:00, alan c <aeclist at candt.waitrose.com> wrote:
> On 10/03/12 14:32, Nigel Verity wrote:
>> Hi
>> A
>> bit of advice on partitioning, please.
>>
>> I
>> currently dual-boot Xubuntu and Windows 7. I've now got to the happy
>> situation where I no longer need any Windows applications.
>> Consequently I'd like to delete Windows and reclaim the 80 Gb of disk
>> space it takes up. Would I be better off simply clearing down the
>> whole machine and re-installing Xubuntu from scratch, or is it safe
>> to mess about with the partitions using a tool like GParted. If the
>> latter, perhaps somebody knows of a good idiot's guide, as I've had a
>> few problems in the past resizing partitions.
>
> By far the safest thing, if you have to edit partitions at all (back
> up first anyway), is to leave the empty windows partition in place,
> but greatly resize it smaller, say to 1GB whatever. Then resize the
> ubuntu larger to fill the gap. A conventional ubuntu dual boot install
>  would have also created an extended partition to enable use of
> logical partitions so the ubuntu will often be in /dev/sda5 whatever.
>
> If this is in your case too, then an intermediate action would be to
> resize the extended partition before expanding the ubuntu partition.
>
> If I am correct here (?)
> The advantage of all this would be that the MBR will likely point to
> the original Ubuntu partition name (sda5?)
>
> If you delete a partition entirely it is possible (?) that  the clunky
> partition system will rename partitions on the fly and ubuntu will not
> boot without a reinstall of GRUB.
>
> good luck

That's true & good advice.

You could, of course, give Windows a major clear-out - uninstall
everything, empty the bin, empty all your data directories, remove all
user accounts but "administrator", delete all your temp files and
uninstall files, disable hibernation, and then defrag it.

Then in Ubuntu, remove its swap file (C:\PAGEFILE.SYS) and
C:\HIBERFIL.SYS if it's still there.

Then shrink the partition down as small as it will go. You could
easily reclaim 70 of your 80GB that way, even if it's Windows 7.

Then leave it - it's handy for upgrading the BIOS and things like that.

OTOH I can understand the appeal of a completely "clean",
MICROS~1-free machine. :¬)

-- 
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