Extended Partition: Trying to understand what to do when my other partition is full

Question

I am not new to Ubuntu but I don't mess with partitions that often and I'm a little lost.

I have an extended partition on my drive and I don't really know why or what it does. /sda3 is listed as extended and Ubuntu is on /sda5.

The extended partition is 130 GB on a 500 GB drive, so it takes up a significant amount of storage but I don't remember why. Nor do I know what to do with it. Can it just be turned into additional storage?

I tried to read about what an extended partition is for but the only thing I came across and understood was that it was a way of working around being able to only have four partitions on a drive. I understand the need for having more than four partitions (sort of) but not how the extended partition is actually used.

So, could someone please explain what an extended partition is and what I am supposed to do with it? Also, can I somehow use that space?

Thank you!

parted -l output

Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/4096B
Partition Table: msdos
Disk Flags: 

Number Start   End    Size   Type      File system  Flags

 1      1049kB  577MB  576MB  primary   ntfs         boot

 2      577MB   184GB  183GB  primary   ntfs
 3      184GB   320GB  136GB  extended
 5      184GB   320GB  136GB  logical   ext4

Disks/Gparted screenshot

What is inside the extended partition? /dev/sda5? Please update your question with a screenshot from gparted or the output of parted -l — Soren A, Sep 04 '19 at 12:14
Possible duplicate of What does the term "Extended Partition" mean? Is it safe to use this type of partition? — user68186, Sep 04 '19 at 19:58
Thanks for reminding me to post useful information. I think I understand it a bit better now. I had originally thought it was a 500 GB drive and thus the extended partition was somehow holding 136 GB but I see now that it is a 320 GB drive. If I understand it right the Extended partition just contains the logical partitions if I had more because a drive can't have more than four primary partitions. Currently, dev/sda5 fills all of dev/sda3 so no more storage. Does that make sense? — Zeb Griffin, Sep 04 '19 at 20:19

score 2 · Accepted Answer · answered Sep 04 '19 at 13:15

Could someone please explain what an extended partition is?

There are commonly three types of partitions, Primary partition, Logical partition and Extended partition

Primary partitions and Logical partitions are used to store data, where Primary partition are the only bootable partition

But Extended partitions are used to hold other logical partitions

Logical partitions should be existing inside an Extended partition

As you mentioned in order to use more than 4 partitions, the system will usually create 3 primary partitions and 1 extended partitions

So, if you want to create a new partition, you can do it by creating logical partition inside the extended partition

Extended partitions are just container partition of logical partitions

what I am supposed to do with it?

Nothing, just leave it as it is

can I somehow use that space?

You may be already using that space right now if not, use Gparted or fdisk

Thank you. That makes sense. After looking it over, I think I understand. — Zeb Griffin, Sep 04 '19 at 20:20

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Sep 04 '19 at 20:13

On an MSDOS partition table allows only max if 4 primary partitions to be used, but using extended partitions can allow you to create more partitions called logical. The extended partition is like a wrapper, so you could create many partitions under it and those partitions are the one actually using up the space, not the extended partition.

To be able to create more primary partitions and avoid extended you need to convert your disk to use GPT partition table, however this means you would need to format your whole drive.

From the partition type (ext4) this is the one running your Ubuntu.

Extended Partition: Trying to understand what to do when my other partition is full

2 Answers2