reducing windows partition

[oldgeek]

I suppose since we're talking about a hard disk, my question goes here. Currently I have a 500 gb hard disk with dual partition--Windows 10 and Kubuntu 16.04. Looking at sizes, I see that Windows takes up over 300 gb of that HD, while Kubuntu a little over 150 gb. At the moment, I barely use Windows 10, mostly for a couple of astronomy-type programs, and as I'm a retired teacher I no longer have to use MSOffice and so have almost nothing to save in my home folders. With Kubuntu, however, I have been experimenting a lot with Oracle VM Virtual Box but have to be careful about using too much disk space. So what I want to do is reduce the size of the Windows partition and expand the Kubuntu partition. What I don't know is how much I can cut from Windows 10 safely. I have in the past worked with Gparted but not for awhile and I would appreciate it if someone could take me through the process of reducing the W10 partition to a minimal level and adding the saved disk space to the Kubuntu partition so that I can add larger virtual disks to Virtual Box. Any help (silly question--this forum has always helped me except for a problem I had trying to install Celestia, which I solved by using Wine).

[Snowhog]

Take a look at How To Shrink Windows 10 To Make Space For Linux

[oldgeek]

I followed the instructions and got Windows reduced by 60 GB. Now how do I make that available to Kubuntu? Currently it's unassigned. What I'd like to do is expand Kubuntu's partition using those 60 GB. Presumably I have to do this with a partition editor, I'm just not sure which steps to take.

[Snowhog]

Launch KDE Partition Editor and take a picture of your layout and post it here.

[oldgeek]

I'm including the partition table as an attachment. 59.58 (unknown) is the space liberated from Bill Gates.

[Snowhog]

Well, until sda3 is taken care of, you aren't going to be able to increase the size of the extended partition (sda4), which is necessary for what you want to do. You need to go back into Windows and use it's disk management utility to examine the HDD and find out what this partition is being used for, and if it can be moved or removed 'safely'.

[oldgeek]

It's a recovery partition. Googling around a little, I learned it isn't really necessary. But I'm no expert...

[Snowhog]

If your Windows installation is working without any issues, then you should be able to remove this partition, resulting in it becoming part of the unallocated space. If Windows disk management utility won't allow you to remove this partition, then an external utility -- GParted is highly recommended -- will.

Do you have a LiveCD/USB of GParted? If not, you can get the .iso file here and create it.

[oldgeek]

I used Gparted to remove the partition and here is what is left.

[Snowhog]

Okay. Now, using GParted, you want to extend the Extended partition -- sda4 -- "to the left" to incorporate the complete 59.03 GiB of Unallocated space into the Extended partition. Do that first. Then you want to extend or move (move is 'better') sda5 "to the left". Do that second. Once that is completed (will take a while), you can then extend "to the right" sda5. I have increased a root partition by extending it to the left into unallocated space and didn't suffer any problems. But moving the existing partition is the 'recommended way' of doing it.

[oldgeek]

Can't do the first step. When I right click on sda4 it gives me no options to resize, just 'info'. When I right-click sda5, it supposedly allows resizing but says that the minimum and maximum size are the same.

[Qqmike]

Is any of this relevant here? -->

http://www.howtogeek.com/139710/remo...l-of-your-hdd/

[oldgeek]

That page is what Snowhog linked me to earlier. I tried out the program mentioned but it doesn't give the options shown in the article, so I wasn't able to use it. The problem seems to be that the unallocated space isn't recognized as 'free' by Gparted--or at least that's my inexpert interpretation. When I try to resize sda5 it acts as if there's no free space to expand to the left on the diagram. Sda4 doesn't do anything at all, and I really don't know how it is related to sda5, but that's just my Linux ignorance. At any rate, I can't do anything to either sda4 or sda5, and so have only managed to erase the partition between sda5 and Windows.

[oshunluvr]

The problem seems to be that the unallocated space isn't recognized as 'free' by Gparted--or at least that's my inexpert interpretation.

Unallocated means free or unused. The problem is you're trying to expand SDA5 and you can't because:

#1 It's mounted and in use.
#2 It has no free space to expand into.

Starting with #2: Understand how MBR (Master Boot Record) partitioning works is important. You can have up to 4 Primary Partitions. One of these may be an Extended partition. An Extended partition holds Logical partitions. Primary partitions are always 1-4 and all higher numbers are Logical.

So SDA5 is a Logical partition held within SDA4. Thus, to expand or move SDA5 one must first add the free space to SDA4 first as Snowhog suggested, not SDA5. This will then allow you to move SDA5 to the left and add the free space to it from the right - this two-step process will be handled by gparted as one single "resize" operation.

However, moving to issue #1: You can't resize SDA5 while it's mounted. You will have to boot to a LiveUSB (either Kubuntu or Gparted Live) and resize SDA5 from there.

Your other solution is to use the free space as SDA3 and not bother combining the free space with SDA5.

[oldgeek]

Thanks for clearing the MBR part for me--there's a lot I still don't know. My problem was I couldn't do anything at all with sda4. Is that because I need to use a boot version of Gparted in order to do so? If that's the case, I'm out of luck, because I had to replace my CPU this year and the version they put in doesn't allow me to boot up from a USB. I guess I'll have to see the technician to change it. Thanks to all who have helped, especially Snowhog. I'll get it going right yet.