[SOLVED] Do I need to resize my HDD?

[mr.travo]

Nevermind-

Apparently the USB drive I had the iso on had an error on it. I threw in one of my old Mint 17 DVD's and it's copying everything now. It's a shame I couldn't transfer everything over from the old disk. Oh well, I had my important files backed up. I really need to spend some more time learning learning learning and some more learning. I sometimes feel like I am in a crash course in Japanese. Whenever I feel like I am getting the basics, something like this screws me over. Ugh! Oh well, not the end of the world....

[jglen490]

I have a Dell laptop with a dual core 64bit Intel i3 processor @ 1.9ghz with 8gb of ram (maxed out).

I also have a 1TB HDD and here's how I have it setup:
Screenshot from 2018-01-21 00-19-25.jpg


When I was installing, I read a few "how to" instruction manuals online and just kind of winged it.

Do you guys think I need to resize anything? I kind of feel weird having all this space not being used.

sda1- 678mb free
sda5 (root)- 7.1gb free
sda6 (home)- 60gb free

Thanks guys!

I would use gparted to assign that space as a part of my /home directory, format it to ext4 (or your choice), name it /home/multimedia or /home/data, and use it to store anything you to store there.

Sure, you could also play around with moving partitions and expanding this or that, but the most direct and simple thing would be to extend your /home directory. For instance, here's a picture of my two drives (/dev/sda and /dev/sdb):

Code: Select all

tmpfs           804M  9.5M  795M   2% /run
/dev/sda1        12G  7.9G  3.4G  70% /
tmpfs           4.0G   17M  4.0G   1% /dev/shm
tmpfs           5.0M  4.0K  5.0M   1% /run/lock
tmpfs           4.0G     0  4.0G   0% /sys/fs/cgroup
/dev/sda2        59G   25G   31G  45% /home
/dev/sdb1       230G   49G  170G  23% /home/multimedia
tmpfs           804M     0  804M   0% /run/user/118
tmpfs           804M   32K  804M   1% /run/user/1000

In my case I added an extra drive and made it an extension of my /home. Works well, my data backups are simple - I use rsync to copy /home to an external USB drive, and it copies data from both drives without any additional effort on my part.

[austin.texas]

If you are getting an I/O error I would suspect a hardware problem. Can Gparted access the hard drive and read the partitions?

[mr.travo]

If you are getting an I/O error I would suspect a hardware problem. Can Gparted access the hard drive and read the partitions?

I appreciate it man! Yes it ended up being a bad copy on the USB drive. I guess one of those 1's should of been a 0. LOL! I threw in an old Mint 17 disc I had and everything went smoothly. I ended up going back to 18.3 once it finished installing.

My last problem is this this 150GB extended partition. It seems to match my Home partition. What happened there?

Yes- I created a swap partition but turned off swap (if I remember right).

[Termy]

Now I get an I/O error when I am ready to install. Any ideas? Did I screw myself?

Sounds like a hardware fault. Check the connections.

[austin.texas]

You will like your new SSD, I am sure.
I got a new SSD, and documented how to move my OS to that drive.
Use these instructions to move your OS to the SSD.
Then you can reconfigure your big hard drive as you wish.

I followed your instructions until I got to initramfs and install Grub. It kept giving me an error...

Your screenshot shows that you did not follow those instructions at all. Of course, there is more than one way to do things...

My last problem is this this 150GB extended partition. It seems to match my Home partition. What happened there?

You would have to tell us what happened.
You previously mentioned that your 1TB drive had 181GB used. That means the 150GB /home partition is likely going to be too small (?) - even thought it now shows only 4GB used.
Next, with a separate /home, your root partition is much too big. Your OS is only going to use less than 10GB under normal circumstances, and sizing the root partition at 20GB to 30GB should accommodate any normal Mint installation. The rest of that 56GB root partition is just wasted space that will never be used.

Why would you want to go wired instead of wireless? Wireless is more versatile. You can grab your laptop and take it to the kitchen to follow a recipe video (or any video) without dragging a cord around. (I have friends who come over who would not be able to connect their iPads to a wired network.)

[Termy]

"Why would you want to go wired instead of wireless?" - Security, latency, and/or reliability come to mind.

[mr.travo]

I followed your instructions until I got to initramfs and install Grub. It kept giving me an error so I thought I would just wipe it and fresh install.

Once I finally got it recovered I started over with a clean drive and installed. I was wondering why it had two "partitions" with 150Gb each.

I am still reinstalling old programs back on. So I need to shrink root and increase home? I am still real new to partitioning my own drive so please have patience.

Security security security. I know wireless connections can be infiltrated pretty easily. Even though I have nothing really worth stealing (other than money and my ID), I prefer to be secure in my online life. Also like Termy was saying- the connection speed is vastly better being hard wired. My house isn't really huge, if I need to do something, I can walk to my computer and do it. Other than that- I have a cell phone to look things up on.

Thanks!

[austin.texas]

Security security security. I know wireless connections can be infiltrated pretty easily.

Understood - and I probably don't give that enough attention.

[austin.texas]

I am still reinstalling old programs back on. So I need to shrink root and increase home? I am still real new to partitioning my own drive so please have patience.

No problem. I didn't learn partitioning in a day...
Yes, I would reduce the size of your root partition, and increase the /home partition. One reason I would do that is because you have somewhat limited space on that SSD as compared to the 1TB drive.
You have 2 options for changing the partition sizes: (both options require you to boot the live Mint)
1) Use the Gparted program to resize the existing partitions.
You might be tempted to try this - but the Resize operation requires a lot of computation - meaning you have to wait a looooong time for it to complete.
2) Start over.
I recommend using the Gparted program to create the partitions you need before starting the installation program. You would then chose the "Something Else" option for installation.
I like to do the partitioning with Gparted first just because it keeps things a bit simpler for my simple mind...

[mr.travo]

Well crap, LOL! Dang man that sucks.

What's the best way to backup my programs and settings that I have downloaded? I have my old 1TB drive setup as an external USB 3.0 drive right now and still have about 500Gb left on it. What would you do if your were me?

Thanks!

[austin.texas]

What would I do?
It would, as I said, take a long time for a Resize operation to complete. But, for the 56GB root partition, that would not be too onerous. The big 150GB partition is the one where you have to have lots of patience for it to complete.
I was thinking "Start over" because it is a new installation. If you are intent on preserving what you have, Resizing is the easiest option. You just have to be prepared for it to take a while to complete.
The easiest way to deal with what you have is to first resize the 56GB partition down to half of that - 28GB. The reason I say that is because you mentioned the possibility of (sometime) installing a different linux for a dual-boot. You can create a new partition using the new 28GB of free space to serve as the root partition for that other OS
By the way, no operation is allowed on your partitions until you right-click on the swap partition, and turn swap off.
Then move the swap partition all the way to the right to the end of the drive. That will give you 48GB of free space adjacent to the 150GB partition. You can then expand your extended partition, sda2 to include that free space. After that you can expand sda5 to use the available free space, giving you a /home partition of almost 200GB.

[mr.travo]

Thank you Austin for your reply.

What is the difference between the "extended partition" and /home (the other 150gb). That's what's boggling my mind right now.

Would it just save wear and tear on the ssd to just do another fresh install vs resizing? I can get it started when I goto bed for the 150gb and not worry about it. I just don't want to suck the life out of the drive if I don't have to. I can reinstall programs and whatnot if need be (not the end of the world).

Thanks so much for your patience with all of this!

[Termy]

I'd definitely say that reinstalling is the better option, if you're very concerned about the life of the SSD. Here's how I would recommend setting up Linux:

Have the primary partition be on the SSD, for / (root), which I would say need not be any higher than 30GB (that's assuming you'll install a LOT of software).

Have /home be on a HDD, not the SSD; this is where the bulk of your data would sit, and important data at that, so it's better to have it on a more reliable medium. The other bonus to having /home on a HDD, is if something goes wrong with Linux, it's fairly trivial to reinstall it (once you know the steps to take, of course) while keeping /home in-tact, meaning you shouldn't lose any of your user-specific settings or any files in /home. It also makes backups more manageable and efficient.

How large to set /home really depends on how you use data. My home is an entire 160GB HDD, just in-case I do some large downloading (for example, I get ISOs a lot for distro testing and what-not) but really, I usually use about 2GB at most; right now, the usage is sat at just 538MB, but I'm very strict with data in / and /home; the bulk of my data sits on various other much larger HDDs.

Lastly, have a partition just for /tmp, preferably on a HDD (if you're worried about SSD writes), and set that to something like 30GB to be fairly safe. I've yet to run into issues with a 4GB /tmp partition (actually tmpfs, as I have 10GB RAM).

I can suggest a lot more for security, but otherwise it's fine. That's my advice anyway. My own approach is far stricter.

[austin.texas]

Have /home be on a HDD, not the SSD

That is certainly the best option for a desktop with 2 drives, but I don't think it is a good option for this laptop, with only one drive (the SSD).

[Termy]

Ooh, my bad. Didn't reailse or forgot that it was a laptop. In that case, I would put it all on the SSD of course, but still do the other stuff. I hear you can get lil drive caddies for laptops which replace the CD drive, since they're becoming less and less useful over the years; maybe that could be an option?

[austin.texas]

What is the difference between the "extended partition" and /home (the other 150gb). That's what's boggling my mind right now.

The msdos partition table that has been in use since the Pleistocene era allows you to have only 4 primary partitions. So to get around that limitation, you can create an "extended" partition, as one of your 4. In your case, that is sda2. Within that extended partition, you can create multiple "logical" partitions. You have only one logical partition, sda5, but you could have several more, if you wished.
The extended partition can be thought of as a container which contains the logical partitions.
That is why you would have to expand sda2 first, then sda5. sda2 is the "container" that sda5 resides in.

[mr.travo]

Ooh, my bad. Didn't reailse or forgot that it was a laptop. In that case, I would put it all on the SSD of course, but still do the other stuff. I hear you can get lil drive caddies for laptops which replace the CD drive, since they're becoming less and less useful over the years; maybe that could be an option?

No worries Termy, I'm just glad you guys forgive me when I have a brain fart. I have had a caddy on order since last week. I think they are melting down the aluminum cans right now to build it! It should be here in a couple of days. I am debating to use my old 1TB drive as a temp "network drive" and buy a small 500gb or 250gb drive for the secondary laptop drive. 1TB just seems to be such a waste for one machine to hog when I have over 7K songs and a crap-ton of videos I could share with my other devices. My main laptop's primary purpose is to sit on the desk and be my main computer. I have a smaller laptop when I feel like being mobile.

[mr.travo]

What is the difference between the "extended partition" and /home (the other 150gb). That's what's boggling my mind right now.

The msdos partition table that has been in use since the Pleistocene era allows you to have only 4 primary partitions. So to get around that limitation, you can create an "extended" partition, as one of your 4. In your case, that is sda2. Within that extended partition, you can create multiple "logical" partitions. You have only one logical partition, sda5, but you could have several more, if you wished.
The extended partition can be thought of as a container which contains the logical partitions.
That is why you would have to expand sda2 first, then sda5. sda2 is the "container" that sda5 resides in.

AH HA- now that makes sense! Thank you for explaining that concept to me Austin TX!

I am thinking about just reinstalling Mint and starting the partitioning over. If I go ahead and do that, I will need to create my root partition at 28gb and my /home at 200gb. No other partitions need to be make? That will leave me with roughly 28gb left as "unpartitioned free space" where I can create another root for another distro at a later date (if I so choose). Do I have this concept correct?

Thank you all for your help and time teaching me!

[austin.texas]

I am thinking about just reinstalling Mint and starting the partitioning over. If I go ahead and do that, I will need to create my root partition at 28gb and my /home at 200gb. No other partitions need to be make? That will leave me with roughly 28gb left as "unpartitioned free space" where I can create another root for another distro at a later date (if I so choose). Do I have this concept correct?

Absolutely correct.
You did not mention the swap partition, which, if you intend to hibernate, needs to be slightly larger than your installed RAM. I have 8GB ram, with a 8.5GB swap partition.