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Current state of affairs:

enter image description here

I'm trying to add space to sd6, using all the unused space in sda3 (where windows is). I read through a problem someone uploaded on here that seemed similar- and I think I need to delete the swap and then re-create it but I'm not really sure and I don't want to mess anything up too badly.

I probably should've allocated more space during the install but I didn't know I would like linux this much and now I would like more space.

Also, is it possible to simply resize sda3 to create free space and then mount the free space on its own so that I can store/access file there while in Linux? I'm not sure what format it would be or what the drawbacks would be for the OS to interact with it but I'm curious.

Thanks a lot for the help.

You'reAGitForNotUsingGit
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Joe
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    If sda3 is a Windows partition, the smart move is to boot Windows and use its tools to resize it. I've managed to horribly break windows by resizing its partition with gparted. – Organic Marble Apr 12 '17 at 00:45
  • Thanks for the heads up. I was able to resize C: in disk manager no problem. Really helpful, thanks again. – Joe Apr 12 '17 at 03:20

1 Answers1

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Your best bet is to boot into Windows like Organic Marble said.

1. Use Windows Disk Manager to resize your Windows partition (most likely labeled as C:). This will ensure you don't inadvertently lose any data in the Windows partition when you resize it.

2. Once you have resized this to your liking, live boot back into Ubuntu (or whatever OS you used to access gparted in your screenshot) and remove your swap partition.

3. Once the swap partition has been removed, you should be able to extend SDA6 to encompass the unallocated "free" space you created when you were in Windows.

4. Once you have done this resize your SDA6 partition one more time to free up about 4-8 GiB of free space.

5. Once that has been completed recreate your swap partition using the free space you created in the previous step.

By manipulating your disk in this manner you will keep your root partition within a contiguous partition on your disk. You really don't need to worry too much about manipulating your swap partition. This is used for additional "RAM" space so to speak. It functions the same way as a page file in Windows.

Gansheim
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  • Thank you so much! I followed the steps and everything worked out great. The only thing I had to do otherwise (in case anyone has similar problems and is reading this) is to boot from USB when doing step [3] on account of sda6 being mounted, before going into gparted and resizing sda6 and re-creating the swap. But that was a minor detail. Thanks again for the help! – Joe Apr 12 '17 at 03:23
  • The procedure in this answer actually tells you that - it says to "live boot" in step 2 - but it may be easy to overlook that, especially if you're not familiar with the term. – Organic Marble Apr 12 '17 at 03:58