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I have a 500GB hard disk. And I currently have a C: drive containing 80GB, a D: containing 280GB, and a system reserved drive with 349MB. I have free space of 104gb approximately which I emptied for installing ubuntu. When I live boot using my usb ubuntu detects my C and D drive and I think it added the free space with my D drive which appears as 301GB from ubuntu live, and gparted shows free space only 1MB! Gparted does not show any used or free space of any partition which I have. It shows a red alert sign on all the partitions. PLease help me with this I cannot install ubuntu now except for using the windows installer and I don't see install anongside windows 7 option in the setup.

  • The only way it would appear as part of another partition, would be if the space were reallocated to that partition. If you deleted a partition in Windows, you may have unintentionally allocated that space to one of the other partitions, causing it to be resized. – dobey Apr 19 '14 at 15:21
  • I understand what you say, but rechecked everything. Have a look in the images. http://derp.co.uk/0a13e & http://derp.co.uk/a39c2 –  Apr 19 '14 at 15:44
  • I am also facing same problem. Could you please write the procedure detailed step by step. I'd be highly greateful. – 0case May 17 '14 at 11:32
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    I almost fixed it by these steps. 1) Install and Open Minitools Partition Wizard. 2) select and right-click your harddisk in partition wizard and select "convert dynamic disk to basic disk". Then it will restart the computer, it will take few seconds for the process to complete.[Note: It is wise to backup your files in case a disaster happens although I did it without backup].$. During my install ubuntu did not detect I had windows 7 installed. If you have that, go through there steps. 1) Open terminal. 2) sudo apt-get install gdisk. 3) sudo fixparts /dev/sda. 4) and then press the key 'w'. –  Jun 18 '14 at 14:59

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You have a Logical Disk Manager (LDM), aka "dynamic disk," setup. This is a proprietary Windows partitioning system that's applied atop conventional partitions. You can't install Ubuntu to an LDM disk, at least not easily or with the standard tools. Your best bet is to undo the LDM configuration and return to using conventional partitions. Some proprietary Windows programs, such as EaseUS Partition Master and Partition Wizard, are supposed to be able to do this conversion, but I've never used either program, so I can't really vouch for them. Backing up your important data before such a change is a worthwhile precaution.

In the future, do not use the standard Windows tools to create new partitions; they're known to convert from standard to LDM configuration without warning, and so are quite dangerous in a dual-boot setup. It's OK to use the Windows tools to shrink an existing Windows partition, but don't create anything new in its place; instead, use Linux tools or third-party Windows tools for creating new partitions.

Rod Smith
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  • Great, thank you sir. I used MiniTool Partition Wizard to convert from dynamic to basic. I did this without backing up my data and fortunately no data loss and everything is just fine now. But why does ubuntu not work in dynamic disks??? –  Apr 20 '14 at 08:32
  • Did you notice my statement that LDM is a proprietary Windows technology? – Rod Smith Apr 20 '14 at 13:46