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I have the following partitions:

enter image description here

When trying to install Ubuntu, it failed to read any of them and said "unusable space".

The same from Kubuntu, Arch Linux and OpenSUSE.

I tried to reinstall Windows and restructure my partitions, but I could not delete all of them and I am unsure if I should delete the 39MB "OEM" one and the 100MB "System reserved". I am a novice, so please keep any advice at a minimum knowledge level.

From what others tell me, the primary partition should be C:\ and that might be part of the fault

updated screen

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  • 1
    You are only allowed 4 primary partitions on a disk. Oct 9, 2011 at 17:18
  • @DavidSchwartz yes but I only have 1 and it's not even the right one!
    – andrei
    Oct 9, 2011 at 17:21
  • How did you establish that? I strongly suspect your first four partitions are all primary. Oct 9, 2011 at 17:22
  • @DavidSchwartz The print screen does not include this but there is a legend for that program(Disk Management in Win7).Blue means primary, that weird yellow means simple volume and black is unallocated
    – andrei
    Oct 9, 2011 at 17:25
  • If you right-click on the unallocated space, does it let you allocate it? Oct 9, 2011 at 17:56

3 Answers 3

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(People please read the image more carefully.)

The OP's real problem is that the disk is Dynamic instead of basic. This is a M$ proprietary format that builds on GPT. For OSes that do not support it the whole disk is seen filled with a big data partition and a small one for metadata.

The OP should first convert the disk to a Basic one in GPT and then you should be able to create a partition in the unused space with your Linux installer.

If your BIOS does not support GPT, you should convert the disk to use MBR partition table and convert partition D: to an logic partition in an extended partition. Then the extended partition can be expanded to include the unused space and another logic partition for Linux.

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  • Any recommendations ? How should i do this how should i format my HDD (which software) ?
    – andrei
    Oct 10, 2011 at 7:56
  • Dynamic discs do not imply the EFI partition table format. They can employ either partitioning scheme, and the partitioning scheme used here is largely irrelevant (given that Ubuntu can handle both the EFI and the old PC/AT MBR scheme, and the version of Windows in use clearly can handle whatever currently exists).
    – JdeBP
    Oct 10, 2011 at 10:49
  • You don't have to format the disk. Windows can convert it back for you. Just right click on the grey area saying "Disk 0 Dynamic ..." and select "Convert to Basic disk...".
    – billc.cn
    Oct 10, 2011 at 13:35
  • @billc.cn that whole area is gray i cannot do anything
    – andrei
    Oct 10, 2011 at 15:51
  • Hope this screen cap helps: img.skitch.com/20111010-ens4i4xubqbh1mdjxaiwgcifn2.png
    – billc.cn
    Oct 10, 2011 at 16:41
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This was my answer http://gparted.sourceforge.net/livecd.php, made a boot cd and completely re-wrote my partition table. now i have 4 primary partitions and i was able to install windows and ubuntu in parallel

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Just run Ubuntu 14.04 from a Live CD

Open the terminal and run the following commands -

sudo fixparts /dev/sda

and then press the key w

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    From the description, that won’t help with Dynamic Disks.
    – Daniel B
    Sep 12, 2014 at 10:29

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