Unable to use Unallocated space

Question

I have an XPS 13 that came with Windows 10, and various Dell recovery partitions. I deleted those partitions and split the drive in two for Windows 10 and Ubuntu 16.04.

My issue is that the ~12 gigabytes that were being used for the recovery images and OS can't be used. I want to expand each of Windows and Ubuntu's Filesystem partition by 6gb each. However, no matter what utility I use (Windows disk management, GParted), I can't expand any partitions, despite having 12 GB of unallocated space.

I've tried formatting it, deleting again, and nothing changes it. It shows as being on the same drive - I thought maybe it was some kind of extra internal storage - but when adding all the partitions together, including those I get approximately the 256gb I should have. However, When deleting the original partitions, I had two set of "unallocated space". Deleting the original windows partition created the 116gb unallocated space I expected (which happened to be to the left of the Linux Filesystem, and the Swap partition), and to the right of the Linux partitions were the recovery ones. When I deleted those, they didn't merge into the unallocated space to the right.

Here's a screenshot of my drive in GParted:

I'm at a loss as to how I should proceed.

Answer 1

The position of the unallocated space makes it impossible to use it in the linux / partition.

Try the following:

1. PLEASE BACKUP YOUR SYSTEM

2. Using gparted in a live environment ( i.e boot with gparted iso)

3. Delete the swap partition

4. Expand the linux / partion to use what allocation you want.

5. Now Create new partion of type swap

Answer 2

"I want to expand each of Windows and Ubuntu's File-system partition by 6gb each"

From the way your current partitions are that will be difficult, not without loss of data. But you can extend you Linux partition to take the entire unallocated space. follow direction given by George.

Just to add that after recreating new swap partition you would also need to modify your Linux system's /etc/fstab to use the new swap partition.In your fstab, replace the information (device node or UUID) of the old swap partition with that of the new one.