How to Increase Home Folder Size in Ubuntu 14.04 LTS?

Question

I want to expand home partition refers that folder will be full.

I've been looking this problem on the internet, it was told to boot over "the gparted live cd/usb", but still can not expand its size.

This is the video when I boot through Gparted live usb/cd, but still can't increase the size of my home partition.

And this is picture of my partition setup gparted live on ubuntu :

Solution

Looking at your setup, I believe you are having a MBR disk and therefore am using a extended partition. This is why you were experiencing the problem. The limitation with MBR is that you can't have more than 4 primary partitions. So what is usually done when you want more than 4 partitions on a MBR disk is to create 3 primary partitions, and make the fourth one an extended partition. Now inside the extended partition you can create multiple logical partitions.

This is the setup you have. You had sda1, sda3 and the windows partition as primary partitions and sda2 is your extended partition within which you have sda5 and sda6 (logical partitions).

Whenever you want to increase the size of a logical partition, you need to first increase the size of the extended partition within which it is contained, and then increase the size of logical partitions in it.

Even if you did not understand what I just told you, never mind, I will walk you through the steps.

1. You can't modify partitions that are mounted. So the first step is to right click on each partition with a 'key' symbol next to them and unmount them.
2. Move sda3 to the right to create enough unalocated space between sda6 and sda3.

3. Now you should be able to expand sda2, your extended partition to take up the free space.

4. Finally Expand the size of your home(sda6) partition.

A Tip: You could use a bit more swap space to increase your system performance. So while you are at it, before step 3, move the existing sda6 1 or 2 GB to the right and expand your swap space.

Comments

[daltonfury42]

Open gparted, and post a screenshot of your partition setup.

[Ramadhan Arif Hardijansyah]

this is screenshot of my partition setup live from ubuntu gparted : s2.postimg.org/5pwzq5k61/gparted.png

[Ramadhan Arif Hardijansyah]

Sorry for long time response. yeah sda6 is my /home and sda3 is my root. But the problem is sda6(/home) and sda2(extended) both can't be expanded. of course sda5(linux-swap) can't be expanded too.

[Cbhihe]

@Ramadan_Arif_Hardijansyah, you can expand your swap too.

[MGodby]

@RamadhanArifHardijansyah did you try moving /dev/sda3 to the right first?

[Ramadhan Arif Hardijansyah]

Move sda3 to the right? did you mean resize(increase)? when i do it, it doesnt give unlocated space "between" sda6 and sda3

[daltonfury42]

You have not read carefully. Move sda3 to the right. Then expand sda2 to occupy the space. Then only unallocated space will appear between sda6 and sda3

[daltonfury42]

When you do it(ie move sda3 to the right), where does the unallocated space appear?

[Ramadhan Arif Hardijansyah]

when i do it, the unallocated space is still under sda3 (no new unallocated space appear). youtu.be/eFoZ3IqaOfQ <--- see this maybe I was misunderstood or doing a wrong step

[Ramadhan Arif Hardijansyah]

ohh sorry, I was wrong in applying the methods you gave. I just now know that the intent of "move" is increase of the free space preceding. Thanks for your answer. and i found on here help.ubuntu.com/community/HowtoPartition/MovingPartition

[daltonfury42]

Yeah, there's a difference between moving and expanding/shrinking/resizing.