8.10 wont partition (beginner)

[amc6987]

I am very new to ubuntu. I have tried hardy heron a few months ago, until the boot file mysteriously disappeared. I have just been using my Vista partition since, but my bootmenu at the beginning still lists both Ubuntu and Vista.

I decided to give it another shot with a LiveCD. Everything was going well until the partitioning step. I choose the "guide" one (which designated 74% to Vista and 24% to Ubuntu), and it stays at 0% progress until I get an error message and the partitioning stage is aborted.

Does anybody have any ideas as to why it wont partition? Thanks

[Partyboi2]

What is the error message you were getting?

[amc6987]

Im not sure exactly what is said, but it didnt give any good information. It just said something like "there is an error, this step must be aborted". If it would help, I could try partitioning it again to get the exact error message.

[Partyboi2]

Try degragging windows and running the installer again. If that does not work then use the resize tool that comes with vista to shrink vista down and then choose "manual" when at the partitioning stage of Ubuntu and create a ext3 partition with the mount point set as / then make a /swap partition with the size about x2 of the amount of onboard ram eg 512mb would be 1 gig /swap, with a max of about 3 gig.

[amc6987]

Try degragging windows and running the installer again. If that does not work then use the resize tool that comes with vista to shrink vista down and then choose "manual" when at the partitioning stage of Ubuntu and create a ext3 partition with the mount point set as / then make a /swap partition with the size about x2 of the amount of onboard ram eg 512mb would be 1 gig /swap, with a max of about 3 gig.

Sorry, Im not familiar with the term "degrag". How do I go about doing this? Is it relatively simple?

[Jacob_Kreed]

I am very new to ubuntu. I have tried hardy heron a few months ago, until the boot file mysteriously disappeared. I have just been using my Vista partition since, but my bootmenu at the beginning still lists both Ubuntu and Vista.

I decided to give it another shot with a LiveCD. Everything was going well until the partitioning step. I choose the "guide" one (which designated 74% to Vista and 24% to Ubuntu), and it stays at 0% progress until I get an error message and the partitioning stage is aborted.

Does anybody have any ideas as to why it wont partition? Thanks

Try Xbuntu, if its a low pc

[amc6987]

I tried installing/partitioning again and got the same problem. The error message that pops up is labeled "Resize Operation Failure" and says that "An error occured while writing the changes to the storage devises. The resize operation has been aborted".

Hope this clears things up a bit...

[taurus]

From the LiveCD, open a terminal and post the output of this command here.

Applications -> Accessories -> Terminal

sudo fdisk -l
That is a lower case letter L, not number 1.

[amc6987]

Alright, Ill try that, then post the results. Thanks.

[amc6987]

Here is the output I get from that command:

Disk /dev/sda: 250.0 GB, 250059350016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 30401 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x1c3b98ce

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 1 1033 8295424 27 Unknown
/dev/sda2 * 1033 30402 235901112 7 HPFS/NTFS

[amc6987]

Here is the output I get from that command:

Disk /dev/sda: 250.0 GB, 250059350016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 30401 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x1c3b98ce

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 1 1033 8295424 27 Unknown
/dev/sda2 * 1033 30402 235901112 7 HPFS/NTFS


The second part was looked like a table:
Device Boot corresponds with /dev/sda1 and /dev/sda2 *
Start corresponds with 1 and 1033
End corresponds with 1033 and 30402
Blocks corresponds with 8295424 and 235901112
Id corresponds with 27 and 7
System corresponds with Unknown and HPFS/NTFS

Please let me know if this isnt clear.

[caljohnsmith]

Amc6987, I think it would be good to make a quick check that your HDD's partition table is OK, because I notice that your sda2 partition extends past the last cylinder on the drive. Please also post:

sudo fdisk -lu
Note the "u" will give your partition table in sectors.

[amc6987]

Disk /dev/sda: 250.0 GB, 250059350016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 30401 cylinders, total 488397168 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x1c3b98ce

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 2048 16592895 8295424 27 Unknown

/dev/sda2 * 16592896 488395119 235901112 7 HPFS/NTFS

This is what I got with that command, caljohnsmith. If you need the table to be clarified, let me know. Thanks.

[caljohnsmith]

Your partition table looks OK to me; even though sda2 extends past the last cylinder of the drive (according to the geometry linux assumes), sda2 doesn't exceed the total number of sectors on your drive, so you should be fine. How about posting the output of:

sudo mount /dev/sda2 /mnt
touch /mnt/testfile
ls -l /mnt/testfile