Ubuntu unusable due to too small a partition

[arthurconmy]

In any case, you need a new drive.

Thank you for this. I think I will try to follow the steps to expand the ubuntu partition, but am I right in thinking buying a fresh, larger internal hard drive and then setting up ubuntu on that will be the easiest approach?

[arthurconmy]

Hey @grahammechanical, just finished doing this and ubuntu is working more stably. Thanks!

I would still like to know, is buying and installing a new hard drive still a feasible option in future? Windows is still hogging a lot of this partition...

[yancek]

I would still like to know, is buying and installing a new hard drive still a feasible option in future?

Yes, several options. You can get a new drive and use it as a storage medium attaching it to the computer and creating partitions for windows with a wndows filesystem such as ntfs and another partitioon with a Linux filesystem such as ext4. Or you can just use ntfs as Linux/Ubuntu will be able to read and write to it. A default windows system will not be unable to read or write to a LInux filesystem so using an ntfs partition may be the simplest.

You can easily install Ubuntu to an external drive and then format the current partitions of your old Ubuntu install to ntfs to use with windows. Windows installer will not allow installation on an external drive but that's no a problem in your case. Before you begin, I would suggest you read through the link I posted in my last post on dual booting windows with Ubuntu. Since you have a legacy install of windows, you should enable Legacy/CSM boot in the BIOS firmware of your computer and install Ubuntu in Legacy mode. That way you will be able to boot Ubuntu and windows from the GRub menu in Ubuntu. If you install Ubuntu in EFI mode, you will have to access the BIOS on boot and select windows there.

If you have questions after reading the Ubuntu documentation, post them here and someone should be able to point you in the right direction.

If you can, before you install Ubuntu, disable or disconnect the windows drive, much simpler if you can do that.

[rsteinmetz70112]

Hey @grahammechanical, just finished doing this and ubuntu is working more stably. Thanks!

I would still like to know, is buying and installing a new hard drive still a feasible option in future? Windows is still hogging a lot of this partition...

Yes you can purchase and install a new larger internal hard drive. I would first clone your existing drive to the new drive. Since you are using a laptop you may need to get an USB enclosure to do that although the last laptop I bought had space for both an internal SATA SSD and an M2 SSD. I'm only using one right now since it came with a 2TB drive. I'm not sure if both can be active at the same time. If so you could simply add whichever one is not present that depends on your hardware.