GParted thinks my partitions are different from reality.

( see the Edit at the bottom before you read the post - it may save you from a long read)

I made room on my drive via an extended partition so I could install another distro to dual boot. I did this using Mini Tools Partition Wizard from within Windows.

I made the partition you see in the picture next to my NTFS partition, it's the 25.33 gig Ext4 and next to that is also a newly created 5 gigs of unallocated I planned to use for a Home partition. Next to that is the 35.66 gig Ext4 I am using for Zorin and it's swap partition of 3 gigs next to it in last place. My E system reserved partition I assume was created by Windows on first install a year ago.



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For the resizing of my NTFS partition to get the space I needed for the new partition, Mini Tools Partition Wizard has to boot into the command prompt at startup to do the resize operation because it cannot resize the drive while I'm working on the C: drive. So when I made those two partitions, I let the system reboot, I choose to go to Windows from grub and the operation completed properly. It rebooted my machine and the Grub boot loader was working then because I was in the Kitchen, and it booted into Zorin as it should have. On coming back, I exited Zorin and rebooted normally - no problems so far. I was able to get the Grub menu and boot into Windows to continue working.

Last night I shut down windows and on starting up the machine today, Grub would not load and I got this error and screen prompt.:

error: file '/boot/grub/i386-pc/normal.mod not found
grub rescue>_

Doing some research I solved the grub error by going here https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Grub2/Troubleshooting and following these steps to repair Grub. (scroll down, this is found under Boot Repair

" Boot-Repair can be run from a LiveCD or an operating Linux system. To download the package run the following commands:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:yannubuntu/boot-repair && sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install -y boot-repair && boot-repair"

I installed Boot repair and ran it. it found the problem and fixed Grub. I was now able to boot back into my system, grub worked normally. I don't know if any of this is relevant to the problem but these are the things I did before the problem showed up.

On going into Zorin and looking at my partitions in GParted, I discovered the odd very large 68.95 gigabyte partition that I know does not exist - I never made such a partition.

Here is what Gparted is telling me. There is a 68 gig partition that should not be there. I have no idea what it is or why it thinks that partition exists.



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The Info for the partition says that partition is busy and mounted but I have no idea what that could be.. there is no other drives internal or external on the system except the partitions you see in the Mini Tools Partition Wizard picture above.

This is new, this has never showed up in Gparted before. I am wondering if the grub Boot Repair tool caused the problems and it's simply misreporting the data - or if something is seriously screwed up. I don't know what lba is unless it refers to Large Block Address.

Any ideas? Thanks.

EDIT:

On closer examination this post may be a time waster LOL.. sorry. I looked at Gparted again and noticed the little drop down arrow next to this partition. Clicking on it collapses or expands all the other extended partitions under sda3. I opened up the full version of Gparted the normal way. I don't normally use this, I use the GParted version in the installer but only when installing a new disro. Could it be this is normal for the regular version of GParted to display this 68 gig large block address area all the other partitions are located in - and I'm just not used to seeing it?

Just confirm this and I can mark this as Solved while feeling like an idiot LOL. I guess I saw it and freaked out. Anyway perhaps something in this post will help others. (Like the Grub Boot Repair tool)

Hi ER,

you highlighted the Extended Partition" which encompasses all of the partitions in that one partition, it shows the total number of diskspce used within it.

Ideally your partition layout for Linux should be:

Root = 15 to 20 GB
swap = double your RAM but not more than 4GB
Home = the rest of the space assuming you want to use all the remaining space for your home.

Take a look at the partitiong guide here for further info about partitioning, it has different scenarios:

viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2601

Regards Wolfman

OK, having looked at your partitions, if you have no serious data on Zorin I would delete all your 'ext4' partitions and your 'swap area'. Normally I would recommend what Wolfman has stated (with the exception of swap area - this should be no less than 4 Gb - I remember madvinegar pointing me to an article which states you should make swap as big as possible (depending on RAM) but NOTE LESS THAN 4 Gb (in the old days 512 Mb would suffice!). Sometimes, hidden partitions can upset GNU/Linux installers - if you want to maintain Windows and you want to reinstall it you may need that hidden partition to do a factory reset of Windows - but be warned, if you do it will want to use the whole of your drive or it won't work - which means it would likely overwrite your GNU/Linux partitions. I would be tempted to get another drive and put GNU/Linux on that if you are concerned about ever having to do a factory restore. However, for simplicity, I would opt for 'install alongside windows'. For manual install I would create the following:

1. 'ext4' Primary partition of 20 or 30 Gb for the root ('/') system.

2. Create an extended partition of what is left AFTER the 20/30 Gb ext4 root partition, then at the END of this partition, create a 4 Gb swap area (this is what most modern GNU/Linux systems would do if you were letting it auto install!

3. Whatever is left at the BEGINNING of your extended (logical) partitiion, format to 'ext4' and mark as '/home' for all your data and windows applications.