How to remove unallocated unknown partition

udippel

8/6/24, 11:31 AM

I have a media drive that for reasons unknown contains a small partition 'unallocated unknown' in front of my data of some 4 TB. So, when plugging in, it pops up as /dev/sdx2. I want to swap this drive with another one, where the data is (as I expected) on /dev/sdx1 (complete drive allocated to data, single partition).

I haven't been able to remove that first, unallocated partition. What I have tried are: fdisk, fixpart, parted, gparted and KDE partition manager. Clicking the partition, 'Delete' doesn't show in the context menu (grayed out). I have tried to 'move/resize' the data partition to the start of the table, however at 'Apply' it starts, and later errors out. Appreciate any better idea than copying everything to another disk and reformat this one!

Edit: as requested

Disklabel type: gpt
Disk identifier: 1A361BF6-85DC-4597-B04E-7360FFCCEFED

Device      Start        End    Sectors  Size Type
/dev/sda2  264192 9767540735 9767276544  4.5T Microsoft basic data

sda                                                                                      
└─sda2 ntfs         Backup_all_media BE8A61EB8A61A11F                        3.2T    72% /home/mydir/media

1 + 2

partitioning

delete

mook765

8/6/24, 11:45 AM

Please add the output of `sudo fdisk -l /dev/sdx` and `lsblk -f /dev/sdx` to your question.

oldfred

8/6/24, 2:47 PM

If you used Windows to create the gpt drive, it always adds an unformatted "System Reserved" partition. Required before any bootable NTFS partitions. Since unformatted, shown as an error, but is required in Windows world. But if external drive, it will never be a bootable drive, so not required. Order on drive is important: msftres http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Reserved_Partition

Score:1

Ubuntu

mook765

8/6/24, 12:33 PM

There is no "unallocated partition", partitions are always allocated. You have only one partition on the disk but there is a small gap of unallocated disk space in front of it. You can not delete unallocated space, you can create partitions in it or grow an adjecant existing partition into it.

Remind that partitions you want to resize must be unmounted, under Linux you can not edit partitions which are mounted (in use).

Since it seems you tried to resize the partition but it didn't work as expected, there might be a problem with the filesystem. Probably you need to run chkdsk under Windows on that partition. Gparted will provide a log-file with relevant details if an action fails, without seeing that log-file it's hard to say what's the reason.

Since the size of the unallocated diskspace is pretty small, it may or may not be worth the effort, your decision.

If you worry about the partition number, please see this question how to perform a fix. Remind that this is not necessary at all, but again, that's up to you.

However, before you start editing partitions, in which way ever (Gparted, fdisk, gdisk...) you should be prepared with good backups for the case something goes wrong. It could be a power failure or a human mistake. If you are not used to command-line tools or have a lack of understanding, the latter is pretty likely.

+ 1

udippel

8/6/24, 12:39 PM

"unallocated unknown" is what KDE partition manager tells me, literally. I had tried to resize the unmounted second partition 'over' the unallocated space to the earliest sector. That- as written above - failed at some moment during the application. I will continue to try out your suggestions.

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