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It will not let me partition, it says the same amount for max and minimum amount of free-space, and the option to partition is grayed out, is there a way I can partition the HDD without using a LiveCD/USB?

Lord Of The Sluggies
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2 Answers2

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Technically, the answer is "yes." You can use fdisk to partition in-use MBR disks and gdisk to partition in-use GPT disks. GParted will also let you alter any partition that's not mounted, or create new partitions in unused space, but GParted won't let you alter any partition that's currently mounted (or otherwise in use).

The big caveat to fdisk and gdisk is that neither supports resizing the filesystems that partitions contain, so if you use them to resize your partitions, you run a very high risk of creating problems that will lead to data loss (maybe immediately, or maybe down the road a ways). It is possible to resize an in-use partition, as described in this question and its answers, but this is definitely something to be attempted only by experts. In the vast majority of cases, using a live CD to resize the Ubuntu root (/) partition is the way to go. Sometimes you can get away with simply unmounting a partition (such as a Windows partition) to resize it from your main installation.

As a side note, if you often need to modify in-use partitions, using the Logical Volume Manager (LVM) is the way to go. LVM adds a new layer atop partitions, and therefore adds complexity, which is a big minus; but it creates a great deal of added flexibility when it comes to adjusting filesystem sizes. Depending on filesystem support, you can usually increase the size of a logical volume while it's in use with LVM, with much less risk than would be the case if you were using regular partitions. Ubuntu's LVM support isn't as advanced as it might be, though, and the added layer of complexity means that LVM isn't for everybody. It can also complicate data recovery if things go badly wrong.

Community
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Rod Smith
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You can alter only partitions that are not mounted. Since /, /usr, /home, ... are needed to run the system, you will not be able to change the partitions they are on from the running system. All other partitions (e.g. from an OS installed in parallel) can be altered after unmounting them, by

sudo umount /mountpoint

I think you can unmount directly from gparted, too.

(The command mount lists all mounted partitions.)

luckyrumo
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