Multiple installation partition disaster!

[alex-bingham]

Guys

On trying to upgrade to the 18.04, I made a couple of mistakes on the installations and when I went back to try and re-install, it kept generating new partitions (almost certainly my fault). I have a dual boot windows and linux but just want the one windows and one linux installation. On analysing the partitions I get the following:

alex@Alex-PC:~$ sudo fdisk -l
Disk /dev/loop0: 144.4 MiB, 151375872 bytes, 295656 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes

Disk /dev/loop1: 87.9 MiB, 92114944 bytes, 179912 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes

Disk /dev/loop2: 87.9 MiB, 92123136 bytes, 179928 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes

Disk /dev/sda: 465.8 GiB, 500107862016 bytes, 976773168 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 4096 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 4096 bytes / 4096 bytes
Disklabel type: dos
Disk identifier: 0x1ff1bb3d

Device Boot Start End Sectors Size Id Type
/dev/sda1 2048 31746047 31744000 15.1G 27 Hidden NTFS WinRE
/dev/sda2 * 31746048 31950847 204800 100M 7 HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
/dev/sda3 31950848 398747722 366796875 174.9G 7 HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
/dev/sda4 398749694 976771071 578021378 275.6G 5 Extended
/dev/sda5 586063872 852079496 266015625 126.9G 83 Linux
/dev/sda6 968693760 976771071 8077312 3.9G 82 Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sda7 398749696 586063871 187314176 89.3G 83 Linux
/dev/sda8 963454976 968687615 5232640 2.5G 83 Linux
/dev/sda9 852080640 963450879 111370240 53.1G 83 Linux

Partition 4 does not start on physical sector boundary.
Partition table entries are not in disk order.

Disk /dev/sdb: 18.7 GiB, 20014718976 bytes, 39091248 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disklabel type: dos
Disk identifier: 0x1ff1bb13

Device Boot Start End Sectors Size Id Type
/dev/sdb1 2048 39088127 39086080 18.7G 84 OS/2 hidden or Intel hibernation


This looks massively inefficient even to a non-techie guy like me. Can anyone advise as to how I shrink/delete the redundant partitions to get more space?

Many thanks

A

[TheFu]

Use gparted or fdisk or parted.
Don't delete any partitions you might want to keep.

[alex-bingham]

Thanks. As a newbie, can you give me a bit of guidance on how to use these tools.

[TheFu]

open the tool.
select the partition
choose "delete"
When you are done, tell the tool to "write the changes" or "apply"

Don't delete anything you might want or need.

[alex-bingham]

Thanks. And will that resize the partitions?

[slickymaster]

Thread moved to Installation & Upgrades.

[TheFu]

Thanks. And will that resize the partitions?

Only if you tell it to do so. Resizing can change the UUID which will break the install. Be prepared to fix the issue in the /etc/fstab by booting from the installation media, mounting the HDD partition, and editing the file correctly. A good understanding of partitions, naming, UUIDs would be helpful. Might need to reinstall grub and update it too.

This all assumes you didn't choose to encrypt anything and didn't use LVM.

Your knowledge will expand greatly. If you aren't certain about all this, perhaps the easiest answer for a noob is to delete all the Linux partitions and do a fresh install using all that knowledge you've gained. Perhaps.