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Please have a look at the screenshot below. All I have to do is to merge the unallocated space (10.42 GB) to my Linux partition sda3 due to low disk space. I tried to resize the sda3 partition but I cannot do so. Please guide me step by step to do this. If I do by myself, I may lose data. Seeking advice from experts. I'm not familiar with merging partition and all. Please help me. Thanks.

Edit: I have to merge the partition sda3 to the unallocated space (10.42 GB). Tried GParted in Live boot, but failed to resize partition.

enter image description here

La Corazón
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  • You need to boot from the Ubuntu / Linux Mint installation media, and run Gparted from there. You cannot resize a partition from which linux is currently running. – Jonas Czech Aug 09 '16 at 14:01
  • ya I read about that in the link provided by David. But from Live CD GParted, can I directly merge my Linux partition sda3 with the unallocated space (10.42 GB) by resizing sda3? Do I have to unmount the partition sda3 while doing so? – La Corazón Aug 09 '16 at 14:10
  • I tried with Live boot, but cannot merge sda3 and the unallocated space (10.42 GB). Could somebody help me to do so. I'm running out of space here in native Linux partition – La Corazón Aug 09 '16 at 17:07

2 Answers2

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All partitions MUST have contiguous space, no matter the filesystem type or the operating system. Your sda3 and the unallocated space are not adjacent, therefore they cannot be merged into a contiguous space.

In linux, you can't merge adjacent partitions directly. You have to delete one of the partitions and have to allocate the resulted unallocated space to the other partition (by expanding the remained partition).

You can 'move' the sda5 partition to the right, thus resulting an unallocated space adjacent to sda3, and then expand the sda3 to encompass the unallocated space.

ipse lute
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  • thanks for the reply. I moved the partition sda5 to the right, but cannot merge unallocated space to sda3 because sda4 comes in between. sda4 is the group sda5+sda6 marked as extended. how to solve this issue? – La Corazón Aug 09 '16 at 18:49
  • You missed one step. You need to shrink the extended partition sda4 so that the unallocated space is outside the extended partition. After that you can increase sda3. – user68186 Aug 10 '16 at 01:06
  • There is no option I can select when right clicking sda4 extended partition. – La Corazón Aug 10 '16 at 05:33
  • Your answer is here: http://askubuntu.com/questions/591213/how-to-expand-resize-extended-partition. – ipse lute Aug 10 '16 at 08:33
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Whoa. Stop. You have to decide what your final disk configuration needs to look like, and why. Moving sda5 to the right did nothing for you. Trying to allocate +10GB to your sda3 Ubuntu / partition won't accomplish anything, as you'll still not have enough to run Ubuntu properly.

There's no such thing as MERGE anything. You either DELETE, or MOVE, or RESIZE partitions.

Your whole current setup looks very wrong. Please describe what's on your sda5 and sda6 partitions, so that I can recommend a reasonable solution for you.

heynnema
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  • sda2 is windows OS partition, sda5 and sda6 are file containers belonging to windows. the unallocated space is made by shrinking sda6. To resize sda3, the partitions are to be side-by-side, so I moved unallocated space to the top of sda5. All I have to do is resize sda3 +10 GB with the unallocated space available – La Corazón Aug 10 '16 at 05:41
  • Can I create a recovery image of my Linux partition, delete partition sda3, create a new partition from unallocated space of 20 something GB (10 GB from sda3 and 10 GB unallocated space) and restore recovery image to this new partition? – La Corazón Aug 10 '16 at 06:17
  • I wouldn't image/restore Ubuntu that way. Follow on questions to my previous. What is the error condition on sda6? Why 2 "file containers" sda5 and sda6? Is sda6 really empty? Short description... I'd probably delete sda6, extend sda5 ~300GB, resize sda4 down, move sda4 to the far right, and take the ~100GB and add half to sda2 and half to sda3. – heynnema Aug 10 '16 at 12:35