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After a problem upgrading to 13.10 we had to create a partition which appears as device labelled 115 GB volume. when opened in the files window it's name in the tab is a lot of numbers and letters.

I would like to delete the partition safely. Is there anything I should check first and how do I delete it?

Matt
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  • are you sure the partition is empty? If you click on the 115GB volume in the file manager(nautilus) do you see any files? It might also help mentioning what kind of problems you were having while upgrading that caused the need to create the partition and where you found the instructions for this workaround(a link would be good) this might help us understand if it is safe to delete this partition. also where is it in the disk(front middle rear) you can see this by the "disks" program in the dash. – TrailRider Nov 25 '13 at 23:03
  • Hi,yes I couldn't boot up after upgrading so we (my son helped) made a bootable USB stick then created a partition to install 13.10 so we didn't touch the old one, then we repaired the old one somehow so it now boots from there with all the old files intact. – Matt Nov 25 '13 at 23:15
  • Also, now when it boots up I get the purple booting options list with 'ubuntu' at the top default booting option. This started when I had the problem with the install. – Matt Nov 25 '13 at 23:20
  • there are 2 good answers to your question so I will not add my own. The screen you are seeing at boot is the GRUB screen. If you want to hide the GRUB see this answer – TrailRider Nov 25 '13 at 23:35

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  • Should you do anything first to make sure it's safe to delete? Yeah. You need to make sure that there is no important data on it that you need. If, after deleting the partition, your computer does not boot, you can use boot-repair to repair GRUB 2.
  • How should you delete it? You install GParted using the software center. Run GParted, authenticate, right click the partition and Unmount it, if necessary, delete it, resize any partitions you want to resize to give them more space, and hit the green check button to apply the operations.

But I can't stress this enough: Make sure your data is backed up and there is nothing you don't want deleted on that partition!

Richard
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first, install gparted; open a terminal and type

sudo apt-get install gparted

open gparted

...It should be simple then. You just select the partition, right click, delete

but watch it!!! you should know that after you do that you'll have the 115 GB unallocated! that means that they're not part of any partition and you can't normally use them. Consider them as floating in the air or something and I really don't think you want that, do you? After deleting the partition you should then stick the unallocated space to another partition. That depends on how your hard disk looks like. You can take a screenshot of gparted and put it here to let us see your hard disk. You can also just follow the documentation here http://gparted.org/display-doc.php?name=moving-space-between-partitions .

...Just a friendly hint. If you don't really need to delete the partition and you can use it as it is then it's better not to play around with partitioning much because you might loose your data.

842Mono
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  • Thanks for that. It is very clear. I should add to my observation about the purple screen with the boot options. I am able to boot from the extra partition as well as my normal partition as my options for booting are: ubuntu, ubuntu 13.10, ubuntu with advanced options, ubuntu 13.10 with advanced options and maybe a couple more. Anyway, I will follow your advice and use gparted. – Matt Nov 25 '13 at 23:34
  • Oh, I have installed GParted and unmounted the drive. Here is the Gparted window after I have unmounted the partition. Next I intend to decrease the size of this partition as suggested or allocate the space to my sda1, ... no sorry I can't post the image without more points, but to describe it, it has 4 sections dev/sda1 , dev/sda1, dev/sda5, dev/sda6 one is called extended and one is called linux swop. Do you know what they are? – Matt Nov 26 '13 at 00:00
  • OK I have deleted the partition, but I can't expand the other one to use the unallocated space. However I might just leave it partitioned and put stuff there should I need to. Thanks for your answers and help. – Matt Nov 26 '13 at 01:28
  • you can't post the picture. that's bad. well, email me the picture at 842mono@gmail.com . – 842Mono Nov 26 '13 at 10:56
  • about the purple screen. It's a "bootloader" called grub. a bootloader is the software that starts up the operating system. It searches your hard-disk for operating systems and lists them up in the list you're talking about. from what you tell me you have 2 of ubuntu installed. If you have other operating systems (such as windows) it should appear in grub too. (check the last option, the one in the bottom) – 842Mono Nov 26 '13 at 11:12
  • and about the "linux swap", it's a partition that ubuntu creates when you install it. It uses it as a virtual memory; it stores temporary data in it, side by side with the RAM. – 842Mono Nov 26 '13 at 11:16