I removed Windows XP from my hard drive from a dual boot setup with Linux Mint 17.2 which I have just installed recently. How can I merge the unallocated space created by the XP removal with the Linux partition? If merging is impossible, what other things can this empty space be used for?
2 Answers
Unless you installed Linux Mint using LVM, which IIRC is not the default, you probably cannot extend your Linux partition easily as the XP partition is most likely before the Linux Mint partition.
If that is the case (no LVM, XP partition was before Mint) then your easiest option is to format the XP partition and mount this under /extra
or /music
. Alternatively you can move some existing directory structure to such a newly formatted partition, but depending on the you cannot do that from the running Linux Mint.
If you have backups (you do, don't you?). It is probably easiest to make a fresh backup of all your files and reinstall Linux Mint and use the whole disc. With more experience you have more options, but since errors can easily be fatal, starting from scratch and restoring your user file from backup is a far safer option.
Anthon is probably right, in the odd chance you did setup Mint on lvm though, here's the gist on how to extend with it.
fdisk /dev/sda
# create new partition with the extra space
reboot
pvcreate /dev/sda2
vgextend VolGroup00 /dev/sda2
lvextend -l+100%FREE /dev/VolGroup00/LogVol00
resize2fs /dev/VolGroup00/LogVol00
Where VolGroup00 and LogVol00 are your VolGroup name and LogVol name.