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I'm running out of space for my Ubuntu OS. Is it possible to allocate more space for Ubuntu without reinstalling it or adding a new physical hard drive?

I am using GParted to view my partitions, but Ubuntu does not seem to pop up on it anywhere:

Screenshot of GParted

Disk space using System Monitor

Disk space using System Monitor df -H

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chompbits
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2 Answers2

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You can increase your Ubuntu partition if you have free space in your hdd in any other partition.

  • You must boot from Ubuntu live disk.So that all the partitions will be unmounted.And make sure that no one is mounted.

  • After opening gparted, right click on the partition with free space and select Resize/Move option. Resize it to get unallocated space.

  • You need to move the unallocated space just to right of the partition where Ubuntu is installed, so that it can be combined with your Ubuntu partition.

  • Right click on the partition you just shrinked, select Resize/Move and move the dragger to the extreme right, so that the unallocated space will be moved to left of the partition.

  • Try the above step to move the unallocated space just to the right of the Ubuntu partition (if you have many partition in between.)

  • Now right-click on the Ubuntu partition and select Resize/Move option. Now you can be able to add the unallocated space to the Ubuntu partition.

If you are using Wubi (Ubuntu installed under Windows), the normal resize methods (Gparted, etc.) won't work and you have to follow these steps.

Resize root.disk

  • You have to boot from a live CD/USB. This won't work while running Wubi.

  • Backup the root.disk (not required, but a good idea)

  • Mount the NTFS partition that your root.disk is on (this example assumes it's /dev/sda1 and the mountpoint is /media/win - adjust accordingly in the following instructions):

sudo mkdir -p /media/win
sudo mount /dev/sda1 /media/win

  • Check the size of the root.disk (not required)

du -h --apparent-size /media/win/ubuntu/disks/root.disk

  • Run fsck on the root.disk

fsck -f /media/win/ubuntu/disks/root.disk

  • Resize - specify the desired final size (this example resizes to 10 GB)

resize2fs /media/win/ubuntu/disks/root.disk 10G

Reboot back into Wubi Ubuntu

Live Resize

Rather than boot from the livecd, it is possible to extend the disk online with the following commands:

 sudo dd if=/dev/zero bs=1MiB of=/host/ubuntu/disks/root.disk conv=notrunc oflag=append count=2048  
 sudo losetup -c /dev/loop0/  
 sudo resize2fs /dev/loop0

This will add 2 GiB to the disk. Adjust the count=2048 argument for different sizes.

rajan
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Here's your problem. Your hard drive (sda) partition has tons of space (sda1), but it looks like you installed Ubuntu from within windows using WUBI, so Ubuntu doesn't have it's own partition and uses a big file on your Windows partition (sda1) as a /host.

There are several ways to increase your Wubi Ubuntu disk space, like Javier's comment mentioned. I'll list them in order from most recently edited to oldest. (I'd try the most recent, and make a backup of the root.disk just in case)

I think Wubi is no longer a recommended install method, I read it doesn't work with Windows8 at all. A better option would be a regular install to it's own partition with a live cd/dvd/usb. But if yours otherwise works ok now and if it resizes ok, why change it?

But if you do want to get to a "regular install" here's Ubuntu's Documentation on how to migrate a Wubi install to a partition https://help.ubuntu.com/community/MigrateWubi and a link on the bottom tells how to do it manually.

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Xen2050
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