Failed Ubuntu installation costs 50 GB

Question

I tried installing Ubuntu 11.10 on my new laptop (HP Pavilion dv6-6b20SE). I didn't want to do a complete re-install and pre-partitioning my hard disk, so I tried shrinking my main NTFS partition (which was about 620 GB + recovery and system partitions) and partitioning the unallocated space, using the Ubuntu setup.

It then showed the 50 GB I tried to shrink was unusable to allocate, so I expanded the NTFS partition back to its original size. Not wanting to give up, I tried it again. Again, it said it was unusable, so I expanded again. After rebooting, and booting up in Windows 7, I noticed about 50 GB missing from my C:/ drive. It cannot be found with disk manager or GParted.

Answer 1

Checked diskmgmt.msc? Try to install with wubi.

Answer 2

To restore your missing space, use QtParted from the System Rescue CD; download here:

http://www.sysresccd.org/Download.en.php

1) Burn the ISO image to a CD.

2) Boot from the CD and hit Enter when you see the message "Boot:".

3) When you get a command prompt, enter:

run_qtparted

4) Select your disk on the graphical screen (most likely /dev/hda). 5) Select your NTFS partition to be resized (most likely /dev/hda1). 6) Right click with the mouse and choose Resize. 7) Set the new partition size. 8) Commit your changes in the File -> Commit menu.

If your keyboard and mouse stop responding during resizing then please just be patient. Once your changes are saved, remove the System Rescue CD and reboot.