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USB - Ubuntu - free space

Posted: Wed Apr 06, 2011 8:17 am
by mattjax05
Hi again

I know this is discussed previous.

I have a 4bg usb stick with ubuntu 9.10 on it. I would like to use any free space on the usb for music/photos transferred from my Windows laptop when the usb is plugged in said laptop. I hear about creating partitions on the USB as the way to let me do this. Can someone please explain the process of creating partitions simply for me.

I have also purchased a 4gb super talent pico usb (thanks for the recommendation Buzz) which I will install Ubuntu Maverick on and will also like to use the free space.

Much appreciated.

Re: USB - Ubuntu - free space

Posted: Wed Apr 06, 2011 8:35 am
by BuZz
if you only have a 4gb stick, the downloaded image will fill it, so you would need to "shrink" the filesystem somewhat and then make a new partition as fat32 or ntfs. if you chose ext4 joggler image you should be able to shrink it with gparted on another machine easily enough. with btrfs it is a little bit more technical.

Re: USB - Ubuntu - free space

Posted: Wed Apr 06, 2011 1:36 pm
by mattjax05
Ok thanks. If I had a bigger stick how would you go about freeing up space for music/photos etc?

And with my current sticks (4gb) how do you use gparted to shrink the image and then create a partition?

Cheers.

Re: USB - Ubuntu - free space

Posted: Wed Apr 06, 2011 2:08 pm
by BuZz
if you have a bigger stick, after writing the image you will have some free space, which you could just partition as fat32 for example. for gparted, I think there should be some online tutorials on using it to resize partitions that would be more indepth than I can explain here.

Re: USB - Ubuntu - free space

Posted: Thu Apr 07, 2011 6:47 pm
by mattjax05
I have been struggling to partition any usb stick on windows - diskpart wont allow telling me there is insufficient space - all usbs are empty though!

So I download Tuxboot following these instructions http://tuxboot.org/installation-screenshots.php but to no avail.

Any help please guys - I am using a Windows vista laptop.

Re: USB - Ubuntu - free space

Posted: Thu Apr 07, 2011 7:29 pm
by dwl99
You cannot partition the disk with Windows if it contains ext4 or btrfs partitions - Windows will not recognise them. You will need to stick an Ubuntu CD in your PC & boot from the CD. Then use gparted to fiddle with the partitions. Don't worry, this will not install anything on your PC.