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How do I move and resize my Windows partition, as well as my Ubuntu partition, and still make them work with the bootloader?

My problem is that I partitioned my harddrive like so years ago, with the first 20gb being my Ubuntu partition, the 265gb being my Windows partition, and the 185gb being another partition just for files.

Now I found myself wanting to use Ubuntu mainly, and so I found 20gb to be lacking. But now I have no idea how to proceed, since I'm afraid of breaking either of my two OSes. I think I already did something like this before, and indeed did had to reformat everything to fix things.

What could be a good way to go about doing this?

And while plenty of people already asked a similar question, I haven't found an answer to the moving partitions problem. Thanks a lot!

By the way, the 23gb is an installation of Kali Linux, but I don't particularly care about it right now and I would actually want to use that space as part of m Ubuntu installation.

My Current Disk Parititions

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  • I normally use 20 or 25GB for / (root). But have separate /mnt/data partition and link all normal folders in /home to the real folders in the data partition. For a newer user separate /home may be easier. help.ubuntu.com/community/Partitioning/Home/Moving Ubuntu uses UUID to boot. So moving partition does not normally change UUID. But Windows has start & size of partition embedded in the partition boot sector. Any change requires chkdsk to update that to match partition table and maybe other repairs. Use Windows for any Windows changes and gparted for Linux changes.
    – oldfred
    Oct 13, 2015 at 13:48
  • oldfred's last sentence is the key: Use the Windows tools for resizing Windows partitions and GParted for Linux. That said, the Windows tools tend to be very dangerous when used on a disk with extended and logical partitions. I recommend you type sudo parted /dev/sda unit s print and save the output (print it on paper or store it on an external disk) before you begin, and after every change. This will give you restore information should something go wrong. Also, back up all your important personal data in case something goes REALLY wrong!
    – Rod Smith
    Oct 13, 2015 at 17:27
  • @RodSmith how do I make use of the contents of that command when something goes wrong? :))
    – Val Croft
    Oct 14, 2015 at 1:51
  • You'd use fdisk, parted, or some other tool to re-create the partitions EXACTLY as defined on your saved copy. There are other ways to do this, too; for instance, sfdisk can save partition information to a file that it can then read back in. sudo sfdisk -d /dev/sda > backup.txt will back up and sudo sfdisk -f /dev/sda < backup.txt will restore.
    – Rod Smith
    Oct 14, 2015 at 22:46

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