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Installed Ubuntu 18.04 64-bit on laptop with 2 drives but installation did not go as planned. While I did make a 169 GB partition on my 2nd drive, Ubuntu didn't use it and stuffed everything: including all data onto the little bitty boot drive. Both OS's were working fine until I discovered Ubuntu was "out of room" to install a necessary application.

System specs are:

drive 1 (boot) a 128 GB flash card which also boots Win-10 using 91.08 GB
       Xubuntu 18.04 {same as Ubuntu but uses the XFCE Desktop rather than Gnome}  27.34 GB
                  mount point /
drive 2 (Also a SSD) Samsung 860 Evo 1TB  with a 762 GB partition for Windows stuff
            and a 168.95  "unallocated block" I believe I made for Ubuntu to use ext4

The following screen shots are from the boot program "GParted" under which I booted my computer (CD). I would like to format the 168.95 GB "unallocated block" to ext4 and add it to Ubuntu which is out of room to run programs. While it would be wonderful to have a separate data partition for Ubuntu to use, I don't know how I can do that.

I guess if I simply format the 168.95 GB block ext4 and add it to Ubuntu under the mount point / then Ubuntu will simply see a lot more room in which to install & run programs?

How can I do that without erasing my Windows or my Ubuntu installations? Link to an earlier related post I made. is my Ubuntu partition full?

GParted illustration of drives

Nicholas Bourbaki
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    You have to use Something Else install option if you want to know exactly where you are installing. You can move /home or create data partition(s). To move /home uses rsync- Be sure to use parameters to preserve ownership & permissions https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Partitioning/Home/Moving Data partition: https://askubuntu.com/questions/1013677/storing-data-on-second-hdd-mounting & https://askubuntu.com/questions/1058756/installing-all-applications-on-a-ssd-disk-and-putting-all-files-on-hdd-disk – oldfred May 04 '20 at 16:38
  • This means erasing the current Ubuntu installation and reinstalling everything. I'd prefer not to do that if I can just free up some space. – Nicholas Bourbaki May 04 '20 at 18:24
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    Moving /home or mounting data partition & moving data to that keeps same install, just moves data. But you always, always have to have good backups of all your data, most in /home and any custom system wide configurations you did, normally in /etc. And a list of installed apps to make it easy to re-install. – oldfred May 04 '20 at 18:46
  • Yes I know about backups. "A list of installed apps". This is not a hobby computer which exists to experiment with Linux. The engineering apps are exceedingly complex and maintained by high end labs. I'd rather not reinstall everything. When I did the original Xubuntu installation I did the "Something else" install. It just didn't mount the big data drive. – Nicholas Bourbaki May 04 '20 at 20:24
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    Nicolas, oldfred did not mean erasing your installation. Please read his comment and links thouroughly. – int_ua May 04 '20 at 20:57
  • Do you want to allocate unallocated space in a drive to the / partition in another drive? I don't think that's possible... – VidathD May 05 '20 at 17:13
  • So this means that I cannot add space on another drive to my Linux partition? It's locked at 14.79 Gb of which 14.70 GB is used, even tho I have a 180 GB unallocated partition on a 2nd drive I would like to format ext4 and mount somehow? Mounted as / or $HOME or what??? – Nicholas Bourbaki May 08 '20 at 18:50
  • Set the partition "unallocated" as a Primary partition, ext 4. followed the article https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Partitioning/Home/Moving and created a new /home. However, when I try to boot to it the system fails and eventually boots to a non-graphic Linux prompt. I can restore my fstab and boot to the 14 G flash drive but that's about it. – Nicholas Bourbaki May 12 '20 at 01:49

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Thanks very much to oldfred. The article he listed did show me how to add a new home using the 180 GB partition on the 2nd or "data drive". The continuation of the thread is here: Ubuntu Moving Home Directory

Nicholas Bourbaki
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