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I'm trying to install Ubuntu 14.04 LTS on an HPG60 Laptop. I'm having a difficulty to install this coz I cant see the unallocated space I prepared in Windows.

As you can see on the attached screenshot:

Disk Management Screenshot

I've prepared an unallocated space 96.72GB using Disk Management. But when I boot up ubuntu and check Gparted, I'm seeing this instead

Gparted Screenshot

An unallocated space of 1MB?!

Never encountered this before. I've installed ubuntu on a lenovo laptop that I use on office but I never like this before.
Anybody have any idea why this is happening?

muru
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Cainhurst Knight
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2 Answers2

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Simple Answer:

What is Happening?

  • 152.53 + 96.72 = 249.25 (Gparted is not recognising difference between Unallocated and other partitions)

Why is it happening?

  • Dynamic Disc - Not supported

What to do?

  • Convert to Basic (data will be lost!)
**Detailed Answer:**

It is easy to make out from your screen-shot that you are using Dynamic Type disk : enter image description here

Ubuntu (I would say all Linux OS) and bootloader GRUB cannot recognize a Microsoft dynamic disk/volume/partition (SFS), and so they cannot boot from it.

You might need this information:

Basic Disk uses a partition table to manage all partitions on the disk, and it is supported by all Linux OS, DOS and all Windows versions. A disk with installed OS would be default initialized to a basic one. A basic disk contains basic volumes, such as primary partitions, extended partition, and all logical partitions are contained in extended partition.

Dynamic Disk is supported in Windows 2000 and later operating system (only). Dynamic disks do not use a partition table to track all partitions, but use a hidden database (LDM) to track information about dynamic volumes or dynamic partitions on the disk (which Gparted is not understanding). With dynamic disks you can create volumes that span multiple disks such as spanned and striped volumes, and can also create fault-tolerant volumes such as mirrored volumes and RAID 5 volumes.

This is the reason why Gparted is acting weirdly

What to do?

You need to convert your Dynamic Disk to Basic Disk.

First of all, BACK UP ALL YOUR DATA!

You can use any good tool for conversion. I will tell you with DISKPART

  1. Boot into any Windows installation media and go to "Repair my computer"

  2. In Advanced Options, go to Command Prompt

  3. Enter the following commands one by one

    diskpart

    list disk

    select disk 0 #(The number may be different in your system)

    clean #(Erases Everything (including windows))

    convert basic

    exit

Now you can easily install Both Windows and Ubuntu.

ELSE : If you don't want to completely clean your hard disk, You might consider to install Ubuntu on Virtualbox

Nagev
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Severus Tux
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    Microsofts only solution is backup & totally erase & reformat. But there are third party tools that may convert dynamic to basic. Still best to have good backups. http://askubuntu.com/questions/482768/changing-windows-dynamic-disk-partition-to-basic-partition-and-not-the-full-driv AND: http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/26829-convert-dynamic-disk-basic-disk.html And with some limits Testdisk: Used testdisk but see caveats in Post#7: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1669418 – oldfred Feb 20 '16 at 22:28
  • Hello Sir Severus Tux! Thank you for your detailed answer. Never been aware that Microsoft is using such Dynamic disk and so on. Will try this in a few days but first I need to back up the files of mom and dad from that HPG60 Laptop coz its theirs. Thank you – Cainhurst Knight Feb 25 '16 at 03:14
  • @CainhurstKnight :-) Nice to hear this Mr Cainhurst Knight,You are always welcome. If this answer did help you, please do not forget to click the grey ☑ at the left of this text, which means Yes, this answer is valid ! :-) – Severus Tux Feb 25 '16 at 12:08
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In my case, I was trying to resize and move partitions using GParted Live on Windows 10 installed Disk. My Disk was Basic and not Dynamic. After successful partitioning operations in GParted Live, partitions size was unchanged when I booted in Windows 10. Even Disk Management was not showing correct sizes. Only GParted Live and EaseUS Partition Master were showing it correctly.

The only solution worked for me was after restarting Windows 10 it started reflecting correct sizes.

MestreLion
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Hrishikesh Kadam
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