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Question really says it all. How to add partitions during install of Ubuntu? Is there a limit to the partitions that you can create, or is it more space-efficient to use one partition? Also, is it possible to 'merge' two partitions into one?

vita-min
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  • Question doesn't say why... Really, what's the point? During the installation you can use "something else...", the last option when asked how to install, and then manage the partitions as you want. However, unless those partitions are required for installation, there's no point in creating them during the installation. Just leave unallocated space to be partitioned later, if needed. –  Dec 29 '16 at 22:05
  • @vita-min What do you mean by 'space-efficient'? – Ads20000 Dec 29 '16 at 22:08
  • It might be, since then if you would've ran out of space in /home if you had a /home partition you wouldn't because it's all one big partition, but then you can't have a common /home between different Linux distributions (if you were trying to do that). But I'm not really sure what you mean. – Ads20000 Dec 29 '16 at 22:10
  • @Ads20000 I mean, would it take up more space for separate partitions, or just put it all in one partition – vita-min Dec 29 '16 at 22:10
  • I don't think it takes up more space per se no, you'd just dividing it into different blocks, dividing it up doesn't take up space as far as I know. But like I said, whilst the act of dividing it up doesn't really take up space, if you run out of space in one partition then clearly you wouldn't have done if it were one big partition. – Ads20000 Dec 29 '16 at 22:12

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If you create multiple partitions, each partition will have its own used space and free space, and they will not be able to access the free space on the other partitions. So you may run out of space on one partition while having a considerable amount of free space on another partition, but the full partition will not be able to access that free space. If you use a single partition you will not have the problem of inaccessible free space, so you could say that it is more space efficient.

Merging partitions of the same file system type is possible, but it is not considered a "safe" operation, so you should always backup your files before attempting a merge.

blendenzo
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  • This is the more practical problem you will run into with manual partitioning. There may be a tiny bit more used by filesystem metadata that normally users do not worry about but is used inside to make sure the files are where they are supposed to be but with say the size of todays video files this is almost surely insignificant. – ianorlin Dec 29 '16 at 22:51