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I currently just have ubuntu 14.04 on my laptop. The partition for it is very large, 110.85gb out of my 120gb. I tried to resize it but I can't change it as the minimum = its maximum size. How can I change the partition size? I currently have windows 8.1 on a usb to boot but have no room with it. I was thinking is there a way I could delete ubuntu so then my ssd would be completely free, install 8.1, and then install ubuntu again? Thanks!

Allan Verkhovski
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You will not be able to do anything to any mounted partitions, and you can't unmount the partition you are running. So, you will need to boot from a live CD or USB, and then you can do whatever you want to the disk, either shrink it or delete it.

But, if you don't care about the current Ubuntu installation, can't you just install Windows, and tell it to use the entire disk? I'm not really familiar with Windows, so I'm not sure. But I do know that if you install Windows, it will not preserve the bootloader, so you would need to know how to restore that even if you kept Ubuntu installed.

Marty Fried
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    Can't he resize the mounted Ubuntu partition with gparted from Ubuntu itself? (If not, he can use gparted from the live Ubuntu cd as you explained) – t.pimentel Sep 02 '14 at 00:24
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    No, you cannot do anything to any mounted partition. In fact, you can't even do anything to any partition with a lower number than a mounted partition. He will need to boot from something else that has gparted or another tool. – Marty Fried Sep 02 '14 at 00:34
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I think that in order for the grub to work properly with Dual Boot that includes Windows in it, you must first install Windows and then install any other Linux Distro. The other way around, I think will have problems with the MRB.

So what I am proposing to you is that since you don't care about the current Ubuntu Installation, you can do the following:

  1. Boot Windows from a USB.
  2. Wipe out everything on your SSD.
  3. Create a new partition and formatted in NTFS in order to install windows on it. (With your SSD size I would recommend to use 80gb for the Windows installation and 40gb for Ubuntu)
  4. Install Windows on the 80gb NTFS partition and after everything is installed properly, boot Ubuntu Live USB to install Ubuntu to the other partition.
  5. Format the other partition to ext4 and also don't forget to create a swap partition. Choosing the size of this partition is another thing, but you can take a look here.

After you do all these, hopefully you will have a dual boot working properly.

Good Luck :)

Community
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negletios
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    I don't think it is necessary to install Windows first, so this approach is overly destructive – noleti Sep 02 '14 at 02:37
  • it is way easier to just install windows afterwards, boot up a live cd and then run sudo update-grub /dev/sdx to install it there. It should handle chainloading to a version of the windows bootloader so long as it isn't windows 8 – sbergeron Sep 02 '14 at 02:46
  • I might be easier this way but no matter what I believe that the partitions size should be like that. I might be wrong, I don't know but when I installed Windows on a 60gb SSD the operating system took almost all the of space after installing 4-5 core programs that I use. – negletios Sep 02 '14 at 02:52
  • @sbergeron - how about Windows 8.1 - that's what he said he has. But I wouldn't say it's "way easier to install windows afterwards," as Windows doesn't support dual boot, but Linux does. So, it takes a bit of work to do it that way. – Marty Fried Sep 02 '14 at 02:55
  • I was just saying it's easier to install windows after than completely reinstall both to get the other order – sbergeron Sep 02 '14 at 02:59
  • Windows can be installed after Ubuntu (though if you're starting with neither installed, it's preferable to install Windows first). – Eliah Kagan Sep 02 '14 at 03:22