Managing partitions through GParted

Gnome Paritition Editor (GParted) is a free application that lets you manage partitions on the hard drive in your Linux PC, Windows PC, or OS X Mac. After downloading a GParted ISO file, and burning it to a live CD, you can boot it, and then run GParted to resize, add and delete partitions.

Creating a GParted live CD - To create a GParted live CD, do the following:

1. Go to the GParted website, click Download, click Download stable releases (.iso/.zip), and then click Download gparted-live- to download its ISO file.
2. Right-click your downloaded ISO file, and then open it with your disc burner, such as Brasero in Ubuntu.
3. Place a writable CD in your optical drive, and then burn your ISO file as your GParted live CD.

Resizing one partition and adding another - If you have only one partition, you need to resize it to create unallocated space before you can add a new partition. For example, you might do the following:

1. Select the partition you wish to resize, and then click Resize/Move (on the toolbar) to display its window.
2. Drag the right arrow leftwards to reduce partition size and create unallocated space. Caution: If the partition contains an operating system, do not resize that partition by dragging its left arrow rightwards. This can make the operating system unbootable.
3. Click Resize/Move (in the Resize window).
4. Select the unallocated space, and then click New to display its window.
5. Define your new partition, including its type and size, and then click Add.
6. Click Apply (on the toolbar) to display its verification window, and then click Apply (in the verification window) to finalize both changes (resized partition and new partition). Wait patiently, applying the changes can take a long time.

Deleting a partition - To delete a partition, select it, click Delete, click Apply, verify the change and then click Apply.