Want to take several partitions and create one big one in GParted

Question

Basically, I have this mess of partitions and unallocated space on my hard drive, I'd like to take every one except for /dev/sda1 (Windows 7) and create one big partition I can re-install Ubuntu on. But I really have no clue what I'm doing.

I format a partition and there is still space being taken on it, I try to remove space from it and it just creates another partition, and I have absolutley no clue how to merge them.

Here is a screenshot of GParted:

Any help would be appreciated.

Answer 1

First, unmount the partitions you want to delete (sda5, sda6): right-click the partition, choose "Unmount".

Secondly, delete the primary and logical partitions (sda4, sda2, sda7, sda5, sda6): right-click the partition, choose "Delete".

Then, delete the extended partition: right-click sda3, choose "Delete".

Now, you have sda1, followed by unallocated space.

• Either boot the installer and select "Install Ubuntu alongside Windows", or
• Right-click the unallocated space (rectangle filled with grey color), choose "New". Create a partition for the operating system, and a swap partition. Then, boot the installer, select "Something else" and assign the mountpoint "/" to the partition where you want to install Ubuntu into.

"I format a partition and there is still space being taken on it."

It's normal. Some file systems reserve space for metadata, when they are created. This improves performance.

Answer 2

If you want to keep windows intact then couldn't you just extend the volume from within windows itself? you know, right click computer->management and there's disk management right click windows partition and extend volume... Is this causing problems too??

Answer 3

You will need to boot a live cd, there are a fw options available
always backup anything important before attempting this kind of stuff
If you want to reinstall ubuntu just delete the non windows partition and reinstall
you can resize your extended partition and move everything in them to the right as far as possible then resize the extended partition and then grow the main ubuntu partition
you can merge partitions from a live cd using cp -av /path/to/data /path/to/new/place/ then deleted the original, after using this on a root partition with /boot you will need to reinstall grub and fix the grub.cfg file for the new partition UUID as well as /etc/fstab

Answer 4

If you are booted to this disk, then you need to find a way to run Gparted from a different boot media.

I would recommend burning Gparted Live to a disc, booting to it, then delete every partition that you do not want.

Once this is done, resize the windows partition to take up the whole disk, then run the Ubuntu installation through again, select the install along side windows option, and profit.

BACKUP EVERYTHING FIRST