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I’m kinda new to Ubuntu and I’m making a slow but safe progress. I had version 12.04 installed, until i upgraded to 12.10, and than it stopped working. Long story short, I had 5 Ubuntu’s installed - two 12.10, two 11.10 and one 13.04.

I would like to clear up the mess. This is how my HD looks like

disk partitions

now, I wanted to leave just one 11.10 and the 13.04 so i uninstalled some OS (12.04 x 2 + 11.10 x 1) with OS-uninstaller. However the partitions of those OS are still there. i would like to remove those partitions, and to minimize the 11.10 HD consumption (later on I would like to add a partition for windows). I read some about the partitioning (like https://help.ubuntu.com/community/HowtoPartition) but I’m still not sure what to do.

my questions are 1. How can I know which partition belongs to which OS "instance"? I'm working from the 13.04 and I want to remove all partitions, but the partitions used by the 13.04 and by the 11.10 2. I have 4 linux-swap partitions, can I instruct both OS (13.04+11.10) to use the same space as swap?

thanks a lot tamir

Tom Brossman
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tamir
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  • The current system is the partition mounted at /, are all the other ones (mounted at /media/tamir/*) older deleted OS partitions? You'll probably need to boot from a LiveUSB or similar to edit your system partition – kiri Sep 07 '13 at 20:59
  • I'm not interested in changing the current OS partition. I wish to remove the ones used by the OS I removed (two instances of 12.04 and one of 11.10) but there should be an operable 11.10 left on the HD. One of the /media/tamir/* probably belongs to the 11.10 still installed (and I want to keep it), I just don't know which one it is. – tamir Sep 07 '13 at 21:06
  • You should try to boot from the 11.10 instance you want to keep then take note of which one is mounted at / in 11.10. It looks like it's /dev/sda7 (used 67.2GiB) – kiri Sep 07 '13 at 21:08
  • You should look here for how to use all your swap partitions – kiri Sep 07 '13 at 21:12

1 Answers1

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You have several issues here plus several questions in one. Ubuntu 11.10 is officially 'End of life' and unsupported, so off-topic here. There is a high risk of accidentally destroying data when repartitioning, especially to newer users of Ubuntu.

I highly recommend you back up whatever files you want to keep to a different drive (a USB drive you can unplug would be ideal) and then start over. Install 12.04 if you want long-term support or 13.04 if you want the newest features.

Wipe the entire disk, deleting all partitions, then see this related question if you want advice on a partitioning scheme.

Good luck and welcome to Ask Ubuntu!

Community
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Tom Brossman
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  • thanks. Actually I already did the next steps
    • removed unnecessary OS with OS-uninstaller

    it turned out that somehow I removed the 11.10 I wanted to keep.

    • booted from live-CD and removed some partitions

    then i had a grub error when booting

    • boot from live-cd to fix grub (using http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1014708)

    it worked (although I get an error message just before Ubuntu loads)

    I'll probably do what you suggested when installing windows alongside the Ubuntu (my next step).

     – tamir Sep 08 '13 at 04:41
  • @tamir make sure you install Windows first, or it's more work. Ubuntu has the more capable installer of the two OSs and so is best run last, to make sure everything works. – Tom Brossman Sep 08 '13 at 11:28