Tuesday, November 04, 2008

Resize ntfs partition to install Ubuntu 8.10

I recently tried to upgrade Ubuntu 8.04 to 8.10 on my PC but the installation failed due to insufficient disk space under the /boot partition. 8.10 needs about 120 MB free space but I had only 60 MB free under /boot.

To expand the /boot (second) partition, I had to shrink the first partition which was (unfortunately) ntfs. The gparted (disk partition tool for linux/ubuntu) installed on 8.04 wasn't of much help as it only supports deletion or formating of ntfs partitions.

I got a Ubuntu 8.10 installation CD and booted my PC using the same. The gparted utility on 8.10 supports resize of ntfs partitions :) . I successfully shrunk the ntfs partition and expanded the second (/boot) partition.

After restarting the system with the installed Ubuntu 8.04 version, the upgrade started successfully.

Note: Before attempting resize of any partition, do backup your critical data.

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