New to Linux, need help formatting/partitioning drive

[AntonChigurh]

Just converted my Win10 laptop to Kubuntu linux, this is my first time using it. I'm having some trouble trying to format and allocate my internal HDD. As you can see in the picture, the drive and its partitions are recognized in partition manager, but i only have 30GB of available internal storage when it should be in the hundreds. No clue how to fix this, any newbie-friendly explanation would be awesome, thanks.

[kb5zue]

For anything related to the partitions in my machine, I use the AOMEI Partition Assistant for two reasons.  First, it does everything and anything that I need it to do.  Second reason, it's FREE.  Just don't forget to hit the apply button in the top left corner inbetween steps.

 

https://www.diskpart.com/free-partition-manager.html

 

Good Luck.

 

[AntonChigurh]

Just now, kb5zue said:

For anything related to the partitions in my machine, I use the AOMEI Partition Assistant for two reasons.  First, it does everything and anything that I need it to do.  Second reason, it's FREE.  Just don't forget to hit the apply button in the top left corner inbetween steps.

 

https://www.diskpart.com/free-partition-manager.html

 

Good Luck.

 

I will try this out, thank you

[Nayr438]

29GiB is allocated to the root filesystem "/"

208GiB is allocated to your user '/home/carson"

 

If you navigate to "/home/carson" you should see the available disk space increase.

[kb5zue]

5 minutes ago, AntonChigurh said:

I will try this out, thank you

Please let me know how it works out for you.

[AntonChigurh]

10 minutes ago, Nayr438 said:

29GiB is allocated to the root filesystem "/"

208GiB is allocated to your user '/home/carson"

 

If you navigate to "/home/carson" you should see the available disk space increase.

didnt seem to work

[AntonChigurh]

12 minutes ago, kb5zue said:

For anything related to the partitions in my machine, I use the AOMEI Partition Assistant for two reasons.  First, it does everything and anything that I need it to do.  Second reason, it's FREE.  Just don't forget to hit the apply button in the top left corner inbetween steps.

 

https://www.diskpart.com/free-partition-manager.html

 

Good Luck.

 

also this partition manager appears to be for windows only

[Nayr438]

7 minutes ago, AntonChigurh said:

didnt seem to work

Is that a partition you made or did the installer set it up that way?

 

Realistically you only need 2 partitions, 1 for EFI(Fat32) and 1 for root "/", if this was done during the installation, i would re-install with default partition (wipe/format) options.

[AntonChigurh]

4 minutes ago, Nayr438 said:

Is that a partition you made or did the installer set it up that way?

 

Realistically you only need 2 partitions, 1 for EFI(Fat32) and 1 for root "/", if this was done during the installation, i would re-install with default partition (wipe/format) options.

The installer set it up this way. I dont know why it gave me 4 partitions by default or why only one of them is working. I'm thinking it might be some weirdness due to me switching over from windows? idk.

[cretsiah]

@AntonChigurh

 

is that picture whilst still using the " live usb " or " live dvd " ?

 

if not then why are you trying to re-install or re-partition the drive whilst inside the Operating System? (not the best idea to be honest)

 

if finished the install and rebooted,  you should just be using the "carson " folder /directory... 

 

i'd try and show yo mine but its split across 2 drives

 

drive one has partition  " /  " on it

 

drive two has partition

/home/cretsiah  ( your /home/carson equivalent ) is on an external USB 4 TB drive..... ( currently loaded up with nearly 2TB of games from steam and heroic launcher )

 

there nothing wrong with the actual set-up the one you show....

you are not meant to be doing all your work and play stuff in the " /" partition

 

-if something goes wrong with you distro having that seperate home drive can help minimise the loss of your important stuff

 

in your picture

 

the " fat 23  /efi " partition is for booting from the power on button (without it you wont get access to your system because it wont know what to do )

the  " / " is like windows user " system" "or"  behind the scenes stuff " for lack of better explanation ( you know the one you shouldnt mess with )

the /home/carson is like your c: drive in windows, where you do everything you would normally do

 

hope i make sense 

 

[Sauron]

The Linux file structure is different from Windows, drives are mounted to specific directories in the tree. In this case your root directory is on the 30GB partition while your 200GB partition is supposed to be mounted on your home folder (/home/carson). Since the utility doesn't display available space on it it seems like it hasn't actually been mounted for some reason; have you rebooted after making these changes? Can you post the contents of /etc/fstab?

[jojito]

On 1/7/2022 at 2:20 AM, Nayr438 said:

If you navigate to "/home/carson" you should see the available disk space increase.

This isnt the same thing, software in linux is installed in /bin or /usr/bin most commonly, so the relevant storage capacity would be / only, thats why its so little. it might show that the partition you are in is larger, but wouldnt actually help solve the problem.

[jojito]

On 1/7/2022 at 3:05 AM, cretsiah said:

you are not meant to be doing all your work and play stuff in the " /" partition

True, but also apt installs software in "/" so while OP would have plenty of space for personal files, there wouldn't be enough space to install software after some time. In general its best to put / on a faster SSD, making sure that it's big enough, and leave the rest for ~, if you want a specific home directory.

 

edit: partition not directory

[jojito]

On 1/7/2022 at 1:34 AM, AntonChigurh said:

Just converted my Win10 laptop to Kubuntu linux, this is my first time using it. I'm having some trouble trying to format and allocate my internal HDD. As you can see in the picture, the drive and its partitions are recognized in partition manager, but i only have 30GB of available internal storage when it should be in the hundreds. No clue how to fix this, any newbie-friendly explanation would be awesome, thanks.

Here is the newby friendly explanation:

 

In linux, the whole system uses a tree structure, with / being the root node, when you mount a partition on a specific directory, that directory and all of its branches will use that partition specifically only. In this case you've mounted /dev/nvme0n1p5 {30GB} on "/" and the new partition on "/home/carson" {~200GB}, this means that your home folder and anything in it will have ~200GB available, but everything else will only have ~30GB (which is what it's telling you). The problem is that almost all software will not be installed somewhere in "/home/carson" which means that  it doesn't have that much space.

 

The reasons to use a different partition for /home are specific and if you don't know what they are then there is no need to do it. I would recommend having just the fat32 partition and a partition for "/" (maybe you can include something like SWAP, but make sure that / has enough space, something like 50GB should be plenty forever). Unfortunately, the only way that I know of doing this is reinstalling the OS and making sure that the partitions are set up properly, if you're going to do this make sure that you have a backup of your files because they will be deleted when the partitions are re-formatted.

[dragonfly43]

On 1/6/2022 at 9:30 PM, AntonChigurh said:

didnt seem to work

Re-install - check mark the /home formatting to Y.