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This is what the windows screen looks like:

Volume          Layout  Type    File System Status                         Capacity FreeSpace
 (C:)           Simple  Dynamic NTFS        Healthy(Boot,Page File)        549.76GB  20.85GB
HP_RECOVERY (E: Simple  Dynamic NTFS        Healthy                         16.63GB   2.54GB
HP_TOOLS (F:)   Simple  Dynamic FAT32       Healthy                          4.98GB   2.13GB
New Volume (H:) Simple  Dynamic NTFS        Healthy                        126.95GB 126.86GB
SYSTEM (D:)     Simple  Dynamic NTFS        Healthy (System)                  300MB    259MB

This is the details on the Ubuntu instalaltion screen:

/dev/sda1    1MB     unknown
/dev/sda2    314MB   unknown
/dev/sda3    590302MB  3221MB used
/dev/sda4    159537MB  15124MB used

The sizes don't match. I want to install Ubuntu alongside Windows on the "New Volume" which is free space. Anyone out there that can assist please?

Braiam
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McG
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  • Sorry about the crap screen layout - please blame it on askubuntu that would not let me insert beautifully formatted screenshots in jpg format. – McG Jan 17 '13 at 09:24
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    Welcome to Ask Ubuntu! I've formatted it for you now, as well as other improvements. this kind of data is preferable in text rather than screen shots as images anyway! :) – gertvdijk Jan 17 '13 at 09:26
  • I believe you might also be interested in reading My laptop already has 4 primary partitions: how can I install Ubuntu? – gertvdijk Jan 17 '13 at 09:28
  • Wow, thanks for that link. It's the one I've been searching for all along and couldn't find. I'd still like to know why such big difference in partition sizes displayed? – McG Jan 17 '13 at 09:35
  • Also, being a SATA drive, ubuntu allows way more than 4 partitions. Why am I not seeing the "New Volume" on the Ubuntu screen? – McG Jan 17 '13 at 09:38
  • The output of Windows is very user friendly and does not provide the information needed to be able to answer your question (primary/extended/type/etc.). Try to list the partition table by running sudo fdisk -l in a terminal (Linux) and updating your question with this information. Also the output of sudo blkid would be very useful. – gertvdijk Jan 17 '13 at 12:57
  • @McG, SATA has nothing to do with it. To use more than 4 partitions you either need to use extended partitions, or switch to GPT. – psusi Jan 17 '13 at 15:15

1 Answers1

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Because you are using the Windows "Dynamic Disk" partitioning scheme, which the Linux partitioning tools do not yet understand ( it's proprietary and only partially reverse engineered ).

You will need to reduce the number of partitions to 3, then convert it back to a basic disk, then you can create an extended partition and fill it with logical partitions.

psusi
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  • I think this is not very true. How can the HP_TOOLS partition work then? Also, Windows "Dynamic Disk" type is an LVM-like solution, but as far as I know, this is not bootable directly. This makes his current set up completely unbootable (which is obviously not the case). – gertvdijk Jan 17 '13 at 14:09
  • @gertvdijk, there isn't anything to think; it says it's a dynamic disk right there in his print out. I also thought Windows could not boot from Dynamic disks until recently, it seems Microsoft fixed that at some point. – psusi Jan 17 '13 at 15:12
  • You could be right indeed. Can't find any information on this. I guess the OP should move to SuperUser.com to get his "volumes" in a more standard format. – gertvdijk Jan 17 '13 at 15:19
  • Thanks again Gert. I moved to SuperUser.com and got some good info there. I will update once I tried the Hex editor on the HDD. – McG Jan 20 '13 at 07:40
  • Just a warning to everyone else. It looks like Windows 7 changes all the partitions to "Dynamic" without ANY WARNING as soon as you create the fifth one. Watch out for that! – McG Jan 20 '13 at 07:43