Reinstalling Ubuntu, Putting on Kubuntu, & Make a Data Partion Seprate from the OSes

[corrytonapple]

I am about to do the install. While I am in Gparted, I see that there are three unallocated partitions, one 3.1MB, another 1.34GB, and the other 1MB. All I can do is format them, or get information on them. Upon formating them with ext2, ext3, or ext4, I get a message saying:

 A partition cannot have a length of -63 sectors.

How do I get rid of this partition, make it part of another, format it, doing anything with it?
Also, is it OK that I formated my old Linux Swap partition? I assume that it will make another upon reinstall (Or I Hope; LOL)
I notice I have been spelling partition wrong. I have been spelling it P-A-R-T-I-O-N, when it is really P-A-R-T-I-T-I-O-N. I am getting bad with computer terms.
Thanks a lot.

[oldfred]

Those are just the gaps the new formating leaves. About 10 years ago they stopped using CHS cylinders, heads, sectors and converted to LBA Large Block Allocation since drives were too large for CHS. But drives were still formated on cylinder boundaries. If you look at older partitions layouts with WinXP or Linux before recently, you see the first partition starting at sector 63. All new layout start at sector 2048 which works better with SSD, and very large drives.

[corrytonapple]

So there is no way I can take advantage of the 1.40GB of space just floating around there? If not, will I ever get that space back?

[corrytonapple]

OK. I don't really care about it. I just went ahead and installed and I am loving what I have been missing from my Ubuntu over the past month and a half. I am upgrading and updating, installing my applications that I really want, perfecting my partitions, and formating my data partition. I am now not as scared as messing with partitions, and now can spell partitions correctly. Hopefully this won't happen again.
I really owe all of my thanks to you guys. As a final question, I will ask can I hide my other partitions that I need to combine with my data partitions? There is about four of them, and I do not want to see them until I but them in place.
Thanks!

[oldfred]

Actually the best way to hide a partition is to mount it with fstab but then make the correct settings. I forget details as I do not do that.

Understanding fstab
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=283131
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Mount/
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/FilePermissions

[kwtm2]

I see that you have already repartitioned and solved your problem, but for others reading this thread, I'd like to offer my own opinion on how to (re)partition the hard drive so that you can have two different versions of Linux (e.g. newer and older versions of Ubuntu) installed, while still sharing data. I agree with having a separately mounted "/home" partition to share data. I have two separate installations of Kubuntu each on partitions that are 8GB each in size. That's all you need, since all the data is on a separate partition.

The main post is here:

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...4/#post4233703

The above thread is for a user using one LTS who is thinking about upgrading to another LTS.

Btw, regarding whether "/home" should be shared: I myself actually do *not* share "/home" between installations; instead, each installation has a separate "/home" in which almost everything is symlinked to the data drive. For example, "~/.mozilla" is symlinked to "/mount/shared_data_partition/symlinks/mozilla", and that *is* shared between installations. That way, if there is anything in /home needs to have two separate versions for the two installations, that is still possible. However, for the novice user this is too complex to explain. You may want to try it if you are familiar with symbolic linking.

[corrytonapple]

Thanks for that input. I will take a look at that thread later. Though, as of now my problem is solved.