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Elisa Rathrock

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Aug 2, 2024, 8:18:57 PM8/2/24

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I'd like to see the full How-To on how to use manual partitioning during Ubuntu installation. The existing guides (at least those I found here) cover only automatic part and leave untouched the manual part (or extremely short and contain no pictures).

As LiveWireBT noticed in comments, it is recommended to place root partition onto primary partition on MBR scheme disks. However, it belongs to personal taste. Sometimes it's even better to put /boot directory on primary and leave root on logical partition.

Optionally disable fast startup and probably disable hibernation, if it is activated and you intend to access the Windows partition with Ubuntu. Run powercfg.cpl and navigate to Power Options > System Settings through "Choose what the power button does".

Attention! No, you don't want to erase the entire disk and Windows along with it. Choose the Something else option if you see this screen. (Something else may be the most difficult option to understand, but considering existing bugs you know what you will get.)

I will not cover how to create mdadm arrays here. There are a lot of articles around the Internet. However, there is one major problem: Ubiquity installer doesn't account for the arrays created in the live session, so you'll probably get unbootable system after installation on such array.

Important: Install /boot onto one of partition outside the array because GRUB doesn't support mdadm. In my case, it's /dev/sda3. If you want more quick booting of your system, it should be placed at the beginning of the disk.

Now suppose that we are going to install Ubuntu 11.04 and at first of the installation process we will meet Allocate drive space screen (the most important step in the installation process). In Allocate drive space screen Select Something else to partition your disk drive manually.

Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no Invariant Sections, no Front-Cover Texts, and no Back-Cover Texts. You can find a copy of the GFDL at this link or at or in the file COPYING-DOCS distributed with this manual.

A disk device can be subdivided into one or more partitions. The gparted application enables you to change the partition organization on a disk device while preserving the contents of the partition.

The gparted application is designed to enable you to edit partitions while reducing the risk of data loss. The application is carefully tested and is used by the GParted project team. However, loss of data might occur due to software bugs, hardware problems, or power failure.

You are advised to BACKUP your DATA before using the gparted application. This is especially true for encrypted data where all of the data can become permanently inaccessible after a failure. Please refer to The Cryptsetup FAQ for backup and recovery advice of encrypted data.

Many operating systems recognize gpt and msdos partition tables, but do not recognize all types of file systems. This lack of file system recognition means that using a disk without a partition table involves more risk. For example, some operating systems might prompt to format an unpartitioned disk if the file system is not recognized.

gparted remembers each LUKS Passphrase in the computer's memory for as long as it is running. This is so that it doesn't have to prompt when reopening the same encrypted partition again. When gparted is closed all remembered LUKS Passphrases are cleared from memory and forgotten.

Changes in a device name can cause problems if a partition is mounted using a device name. You can avoid the problem by using the file system label or Universally Unique Identifier (UUID) of the partition when mounting the partition.

Disks with loop or none partition tables do not contain a partition table, and do not contain partitions. A file system on a disk without a partition table is represented in GParted by a virtual partition.

On FAT and NTFS file systems, the Volume Serial Number is used as UUID. Changing the Volume Serial Number on the Windows system partition, normally C:, might invalidate the WPA key. An invalid WPA key will prevent login until you reactivate Windows.

Use MiB alignment for modern operating systems. This setting aligns partitions to start and end on precise mebibyte (1,048,576 byte) boundaries. MiB alignment provides enhanced performance when used with RAID systems and with Solid State Drives, such as USB flash drives.

The Cylinder/Head/Sector values reported by modern disk devices no longer have a direct physical relationship to the data stored on the disk device. Hence it is no longer valid to use this alignment setting to achieve enhanced performance.

Use None only if you have an in-depth knowledge of disk structure, partition tables, and boot records. This setting places partition boundaries relative to the end of any immediately preceding partition on the disk device. This setting is not guaranteed to reserve or respect space required for boot records.

These actions will alter partitions on your disk device. These actions might modify the start or end boundaries of your existing partitions. These actions might cause operating systems to fail to boot.

If you do not want the start of an existing partition to move, then do not change the free space preceding value. If the partition is mounted or otherwise active, then you will not be able to change the free space preceding value.

Booting into Safe Mode with the commercial operating system that uses NTFS can improve the ability to defragment the file system. To enter Safe Mode press F8 while your computer is booting the operating system.

The copy of the partition has the same file system label and Universally Unique Identifier (UUID) as the source partition. This can cause a problem when booting, or when mount actions use the file system label or UUID to identify the partition.

The problem is that the operating system will randomly select to mount either the source, or the copy of the partition. For example, on the first mount action the source partition might be mounted. On the next mount action the copy of the partition might be mounted. Over time this random nature of partition mounting might make files seem to mysteriously appear or disappear depending upon which partition is mounted. Random mounting of the source or the copy of the partition might also cause severe data corruption or loss.

Use some other method to ensure that the source partition and the copy of the partition are not used on the same computer at the same time. For example, if the copy of the partition is on a separate drive then remove the drive from the computer.

To prevent unintended decryption of data, pasting into unallocated space creating a new partition is not permitted. However a LUKS encrypted partition can be pasted into an existing open LUKS encrypted partition maintaining an encrypted, or pasted into a plain partition making an unencrypted copy of the file system.

ESP indicates an EFI System Partition used to boot computers with the Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) class 2 that includes compatibility support for BIOS functions including the MBR partition structure.

LBA is used by some commercial operating system boot loaders. The LBA flag indicates the partition should be accessed using Logical Block Addressing (LBA), instead of Cylinder-Head-Sector (CHS) addressing.

Click Apply. The application displays an Applying pending operations dialog. The application applies each pending operation in the order you created the operations. The application displays a status update when each operation is completed.

If you saved the gparted details to the Live CD root file system, then you need to copy the file to more permanent storage. Examples of more permanent storage are a hard disk drive or a USB flash memory drive.

If your computer does not use GRUB then you are advised to consult documentation for your boot loader to learn how to fix the problem. You might consult the GParted FAQ, or the GParted forum. You might also search the Internet to learn how other people have solved similar problems.

Use GParted to list the partitions on your disk device. Look for a partition that contains your GNU/Linux / file system. This Linux partition will likely use a file system such as ext2, ext3, ext4, or btrfs.

If no partitions are found, you have other options to try to rescue your data. The photorec application is designed to help recover many different types of lost files. For more information about photorec, see

To boot the GParted Live image from USB flash drive or CD-ROM disc, your computer BIOS must be properly configured. More specifically the BIOS must be set to boot from CD-ROM and other removable devices before booting from hard disk drives.

On an IBM NetFinity 5000 server, the GUI starts with a low video resolution. The S3 based onboard video on this IBM server hardware offers 1 MB video RAM only. Use the following extra step to select a higher video resolution:

I downloaded GParted live archive and extracted it to /dev/sda4.The GParted guide explains installation with grub, but since I'm not using grub I wanted to give it a shot adding a manual entry to rEFInd. This is the pratition tree.

Restarting and booting from that new entry in rEFInd yields the error Invalid loader file. Error not found while loading. And it yanks me back to rEFInd loader.In the end I let rEFInd scan for new entries itself, it adds it correctly and I can boot GParted, but when I add the stanza manually it's not working. I want to know what was the mistake I made?