[ale] GParted & unallocated space

[Jim Philips]

I went back to Windows and tried to format the "unallocated space". It
wouldn't let me. So, I used the Windows partition tool to regrow the Windows
partition to its maximum size and reclaim that space. I then tried to shrink
that partition again, thinking I could format the empty space as ntfs. When
I went to shrink, Windows complained that tghe partition could not be shrunk
because it was corrupted and I needed to run chkdsk to fix the problem. I
ran chkdsk twice, but I s'm still not being allowed to shrink that partition
in Windows. I could shrink it again in GParted, but I will end up again with
"unallocated space" that GParted refuses to format. This is getting to be
less fun as it goes along.

On Sat, Sep 25, 2010 at 10:43 AM, justin caratzas <justin.caratzas at gmail.com
> wrote:

> I've seen people advocate with either choice for shrinking the windows
> partition.  I just went through a similar situation where I wanted to
> keep the Windows installation on a new laptop (Civ 5 ftw) and install
> Archlinux to occupy half of the hard drive.  Unfortunately for me, the
> archlinux installer didn't like the partition that windows had setup
> as a result of the shrinking, something about cylinder boundaries and
> such.  GParted wasn't working either, giving a similar message when I
> tried to just give archlinux the large partition to work with.  One
> challenge was all the partitions that Lenovo had in place (recovery,
> installation, etc).  What I ended up having to do is manually
> partition the unallocated space in GParted, and only make the
> archlinux installer assign mount points, and it seemed fine with that.
>
> As far as the space being unformatted, I think I ran into that
> situation and got around it by formatting the partition as NTFS in
> windows, and then simply reformatting once GParted was able to see it
> upon reboot.
>
> -- justin
>
> On Sat, Sep 25, 2010 at 10:14 AM, Damon L. Chesser <damon at damtek.com>
> wrote:
> > On Sat, 2010-09-25 at 09:58 -0400, Jim Philips wrote:
> >> I bought a new laptop and I'm trying to install Ubuntu on it. The firs
> >> time around, I ended up destroying the Windows installation (which I
> >> did not want to do). The second time I went in and looked for the
> >> "side by side" option for installing from the live CD. It wasn't
> >> there. So, I decided to try GParted. I shrank the nearly 475 gigs
> >> dedicated to Windows in half. After that, I am left with 235 gigs of
> >> unallocated space. The Ubuntu installer will neither format nor
> >> install to that space. Gparted won't format it either. So, from where
> >> I am now, there is nothing I can do with that space either with the
> >> Ubuntu installer or GParted. The "Format to" option is just grayed out
> >> in GParted. I don't remember my last install being this hard.
> >>
> >> This is a Windows 7, 64 bit laptop.
> >
> > It is desirable to "shrink" the partition from with-in windows.  Right
> > click on "my computer" select "manage" go down to "disk manager".  I
> > don't remember the exact thing to do, but from there (perhaps by right
> > clicking menu on the disk partition?) you can select to change the size
> > of the partition.  Give that a try.  I have never "seen" the situation
> > you are describing, however, I have broke windows 7 by NOT using windows
> > built in disk manager to change the size.
> >
> > HTH
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> > --
> > Damon
> > damon at damtek.com
> >
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>
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