how to exchange unusable space to ext4 in ubuntu 14.04 installer?

Question

I am trying to install ubuntu 14.04 along side with windows 8 : when I try to create an ext4 partition after creating one ext4 and swap , remaining space changed to unusable how should I prevent that, so that I could create an ext4 partition as /home to continue with my installation.

/dev/sda
 /dev/sda1 ext4         19999 MB
 /dev/sda4 swap         7999 MB
 unusable               181716 MB
 /dev/sda2 ntfs         327155 
 /dev/sda3 ntfs         463331 MB

any help would be appreciate.

thank you in advance.

Solution 1

When starting the live session, choose "try Ubuntu". Then open GParted via Dash. GParted is a way better partitioning program than the one in the installer. It will give you great visual display and if something doesn't work, it will give you useful information about what doesn't work.

Please also notice that (if you have an HDD, so if you have an SSD, please ignore this paragraph) data on the outside of your HDD can be read and wrote way faster than on the inside, so you want to put your operating system on the outside and partitions with mainly data on them on the inside. Outside to inside is shown as left to right in partitioning programs such as GParted.

Your particular problem here is that you already have the maximum number of primary partitions. You need to delete at least one of them and create an extended partition in which you can place more partitions (logical partitions).

Solution 2

Perhaps you are creating maximum allowed number of primary partition. so Define the swap area as logical partition and in most cases problem will be solved.

Comments

[No Time]

This might be your ESP (although the size looks like it is a bit large). It could be a recovery partition and where your settings for EFI are located.

[f.a]

@No Time,thanks for your comment, but that's not the case.

[f.a]

thanks for your answer, yes the problem was that I ahve the maximum number of primary partitions , so what I did was to use partitioning software on windows to merge them , and then ,i could have 3 partition on ubuntu .