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Few days ago i installed Ubuntu 12.04 LTS alongside my Windows 7 64 Bit. I installed Ubuntu through live CD installation, but instead of giving it a partition of 200 GB i gave Ubuntu more than a terabyte and left Windows 7 with 281 GB free space. I corrected this with GParted and reduced the size of sda5 to 216 GiB with help from here. But now i am left with 1.30 TiB unallocated partition which I actually want to add back to my Windows 7 partition. I think that i need to shrink sda4 and then grow sda2 but every time i try to shrink sda4 i get the message from GParted: Can't have overlapping partitions. Can someone guide me through this problem ? Has anyone any idea why i can't expand sda2 ?

GParted Images from Live CD:

The Information of my Partitions (right click and open in new tab) GParted Partition Information

I have selected sda4 partition sda4

Now i want to shrink sda4, so that afterwards i can drag sda2 over the unallocated partition. sda4 shrink

After i click apply i get this error message: Can't have overlapping partitions. GParted Error Masage

Disk Managment on Windows 7

I tried also the same thing from Windows 7. I wanted to expand my (C:) drive over the free space (Green Color). But first i need to delete free space and change it to unallocated space. The problem is that when i try to delete the free space partition i get the massage: There is not enough space available on the disc(s) to complete this operation. I think this has something to do with Windows having troubles with partition ordering and allowing 0 to maximum 4 primary partitions. So is there no way to do it with Windows Disk Managment ? Maybe with diskpart.exe or some third party software ? Can someone help and guide me through this ?

Disk Management in Windows 7 Partition Informations Windows 7 DiskManagment

Hear i get the error massage when i try to delete the partition. not enough space on the disk

Diskpart informatins with primary, logical and extended partitions diskpart information

After uninstalling Ubuntu i re-installed it and this is how my partitions look now:

partitions after

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  • You are indeed right. This has to do with the limits of how many primary partitions a single disk can have. You will have to reduce the amount to resolve your problem.
    – Ramhound
    Mar 3, 2013 at 18:16
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    Reduce the amount of what, and how?
    – Devid
    Mar 3, 2013 at 18:49
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    There is something strange going on here. I recreated your partitions on my flash drive, and resizing the extended partition works just fine with GParted. Also, Windows falsely reports all partitions as primary ones. Try resizing from your Ubuntu installation instead of the live CD. The GParted from the LiveCD might be outdated.
    – Dennis
    Mar 3, 2013 at 19:20
  • @Dennis I don't think that GParted is outdated cause i have downloaded Ubuntu on Live CD before 1 or 2 weeks. I tried to do it from Ubuntu (not the live CD) but i can't. When i try to re-size sda4 it is mounted and i can't unmount it while using Ubuntu. Maybe there is some good third party software for Windows 7 which i could use hear to merge sda2 ((C:) drive) with unallocated partition (Free Space). Do you know of any ? And will it do the trick ? I am not experienced in this, but diskpart shows 2 Primary Partitions, 1 Extended Partition, 2 Logical Partitions and one OEM Partition.
    – Devid
    Mar 3, 2013 at 19:46
  • I though that maybe since only the logical partition inside sda4 is mounted, it would let you get away with it. Ubuntu 12.04 is from April 2012, so its GParted might be outdated. Even the updated version is only 0.11; the GParted LiveCD is version 0.14.
    – Dennis
    Mar 3, 2013 at 22:11

1 Answer 1

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It looks like in this case you may have to delete the logical drives sda5 and sda6, then delete the extended partition sda4 which will allow you to grow sda2. Then you can reinstall Linux.

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  • Is there no better way than to delete Linux ? sda4, sda5 and sda6 have nothing to do with windows, right? To delete this partitions i just need to go to GParted select sda5 and sda6 right click and delete the partitions, that will also uninstall Linux, afterwards i can expand my (C:) drive from windows Disk Management or just grow sda2 from Gparted,right ? Ok i will wait for more suggestions, if this is the only and best solution i will accept your answer.
    – Devid
    Mar 3, 2013 at 18:48
  • You should be able to use the unallocated space for windows but it wont be an extension of sda2, although you could mount it as a mount point vs a separate drive letter.
    – user168261
    Mar 3, 2013 at 19:01
  • Too bad the drive isn't GPT vs MBR partitioned and you probably wouldn't have this problem, but that would require a UEFI system and Windows 7 64 bit if you needed to boot from the drive.
    – user168261
    Mar 3, 2013 at 19:06

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