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In 18.04.5 I have a 128Gb SSD which was formatted solely for Ubuntu.

The disks table appears thus:

enter image description here

indicating an EFI File System partition of 537Mb and a single partition (Partition 2) of 127Gb Ext4.

On a newly installed 20.04.1 PC with a (similar) 128Gb SSD, after tinkering with the additional partition options, I seem to have managed to achieve 2 partitions after the 537Mb FAT - an extended Partition 2 of 127Gb and a Partition 5 127Gb Ext 4 thus:

enter image description here

Other than perhaps starting the installation process from the start, is there a way I can reconfigure this drive or is it of little or no consequence?

What I was trying to achieve was to exploit the whole of the volume (all 128Gb) to Ubuntu. Is this indeed possible and if not, what steps should be taken to mount the second partition to take advantage of the whole volume?

graham
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  • Would leave it a lone. Do not really gain enough space to make it worth while. Need the EFI to boot if a UEFI system. – crip659 Dec 12 '20 at 19:56
  • You are using the whole disk already, your OS-partition is 127 GB, ESP is 537 MB, there might be a tiny gap at the end of the disk. What is irritating you, the EFI System Partition or the Extended partition? Remind that the disks use different partition table type, while your first screenshot shows GPT, the other disk has MBR. – mook765 Dec 12 '20 at 20:25
  • @mook765 my lack of understanding why there are 2 partitions (2 and 5). As I add things in the system (software from repositories for example), which partition will they occupy or is it seamless and I need do nothing nor worry that I will run out of space. I shall put data to the 750Gb drive. Basically, it just looks untidy to me! – graham Dec 12 '20 at 20:44
  • You messed up when you used the MBR partitioning scheme instead of GPT. The only way to fix this is to format the whole disk (as GPT) and reinstall the operating system – Nmath Dec 12 '20 at 20:58
  • @Nmath Ah, was afraid of that. Luckily not progressed too far in moving everything over to 20.04 Thanks – graham Dec 12 '20 at 21:02
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    @User24601 The extended partition is a container for logical partitions ( in your case it's only one logical partition which has the same size as it's container). Converting to GPT will not give you more space, but you can, take a look here. – mook765 Dec 12 '20 at 21:11
  • @User24601 Am I missing something??? It seems like the question is basically "why does it look like this?". I rarely use extended partitions(if ever), but that is how it is supposed to look... The pictures are from 2 different drives, 2 totally different installs, no correlation whatsoever? It doesn't look like you did anything wrong and there is nothing to fix. You just used extended partitions. Unless you meant something else by "exploit the whole volume (all 128G)"? – WU-TANG Dec 13 '20 at 01:55
  • @mook765 so basically having looked through the resources mentioned in the thread of comments, do I assume correctly in your view that there are no real consequences in doing nothing, leaving matters as they are and that the whole exercise is academic anyway? – graham Dec 13 '20 at 09:36
  • @User24601 There are consequences in doing nothing, you'd have more time to do other things. Your setup will work without affecting performance, nothing to really worry about. – mook765 Dec 13 '20 at 12:00
  • @mook765 thank you for your time, guidance and the research you have done. If you'd like tp précis all that, I'll accept it as the answer. – graham Dec 13 '20 at 14:44

1 Answers1

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It's about partition table type and understanding extended partitions.

You use different partition tables on the two disks, while the first disk has GPT partition table, the second disk uses MBR.

The MBR partition table is the old standard, it's disadvantage was always that it can hold only 4 partition table entries, thus one could not create more than 4 partitions.

To go around this limitation, extended partitions have been introduced, one of the four partitions (also called primary partitions) can be divided in "sub-partitions", also called logical partitions.

In your case, the extended partition holds only one logical partition which has the same size as the extended partition, so your space is fully used.

With GPT you have only primary partitions, GPT does not have extended partitions. If you want to convert your MBR-disk to GPT, you can do so, but it's not really neccessary. The answers to [this question] show how this can be done (since you have grub installed in your Efi System Partition, you may skip the part about installing grub). Alternatively one could opt for a fresh install, then one should prepare the disk in advance with Gparted to create a new GPT partition table.

You also can leave everything as it is, it's a working configuration, there will be no difference in performance.

mook765
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