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After changing from 32-bit (because of recommendations) to 64-bit Ubuntu, upgrade (12.04 -> 12.10) did not go too well, so clean install was needed. I choose the automatic way for partitions creation (because I have read that swap could be added manually).

Now I have ended with one partition /dev/sda1 226.3GB (according to System monitor) instead of 250GB.

When I look it up in Disk Utility, I have three volumes:

  • 247GB /dev/sda1
  • 3.2GB extended
  • 3.2GB swap

I have deleted the old kernels from GRUB (only 150MB), checked the logs...

So I was wondering, is this problem caused by old versions (12.10 32 bit and 12.10 64-bit) still occupying disk space?

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  • I don't understand, the partition has 226.3 GB or 247 GB ? What is the problem exactly ? If you did a clean install, there shouldn't be any remaining pieces of the old install. Jul 14, 2013 at 22:21
  • It's not clear what you are asking. Please edit your question to clarify its meaning. Also, keep in mind that some software tools report disk space in GB and some use GiB, which may explain the discrepancy you observe.
    – amc
    Jul 14, 2013 at 23:25

2 Answers 2

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You should have about 247-(247*0,05) = 234GB. That's because 5% of the available space is saved for the root user so that you may boot the system and perform tasks. This can be tuned using tune2fs. However, you should remember a couple of things; full file systems get fragmented and slow. Also, if your system file system is all full for some reason, you may run into trouble. The 5% is reserved for those two reasons.

234GB isn't exactly the same as the 226 that you expected. There might be other issues as well, such as one using GiB instead of GB, etc.

But to answer your question, it's not caused by previous installs.

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The program Disk Utility reports disk size in gigabytes (GB) or 10^9 bytes. The File Systems tab in System Monitor uses gibibyte (GiB) which is 2^30 bytes or approximately 1.074 * 10^9 bytes.

In my home machine, Disk Utility reports 34 GB (actually 33.55 GB) and System Monitor reports 30.8 GiB. Converting 33.55 GB gives 33.55/1.074 = 31.2 GiB. This accounts for most of the difference of the sizes.

In your case, your 250 GB disk gives up 3.2 GB for swap and this leaves 246.8 GB or 229.8 GiB for the main partition. I can't be sure about the remaining 3.6 GiB. As Jo-Erlend indicates, some space is reserved for system use and it is possible the two programs count this space differently.

The previous answer is correct: The difference is not caused by previous installs.

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gibibyte for the difference between GB and GiB.

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