Linux Mint not recognising free space created by Windows 10 shrink

dual-bootlinux-mintpartitionwindows

I have Windows 10 installed on my HP laptop, and since I'm starting to do some programming, I decided I'd like to get Linux on it too by creating a partition.

I used the Windows tool to shrink C down and create 50GB of unallocated space (attached).

I downloaded Linux Mint onto a USB and booted it up, tried to install it using what I expected to find on "free space" of the unallocated portion, but it's not there! I couldn't find any free space; all I get is:

/dev/sda1      Size: 1MB       Used: unknown    System: Windows 10 Loader
/dev/sda2 ntfs Size: 208MB     Used: unknown    System: Windows Recovery Environment (loader)
/dev/sda3 ntfs Size: 682780MB  Used: 12997MB    System: Windows Recovery Environment (loader)
/dev/sda4      Size: 67165MB   Used: unknown

I can't even see how the volumes tie up together!

Windows Shrink tool

Best Answer

i'm pretty sure the shrinking with windows caused your problems! at least since then your drive was converted to a "Dynamic Disk" (as you can see on your screenshot).

a long story made short: Dynamic Disks are a "microsoft-invention" to overcome some limitations of msdos-MBR (and make interaction with other OSes more complicated)...


the solution is to revert the changes (delete the new partition, etc.) and convert back to a Basic Disk. and then modify your partitions with your live-system (of course after a backup!) right before installing.
at the moment i have no time (and setups) to test and post a full tutorial, but i'm sure asking your trusted search will give you enough results...


this topic was also mentioned at the Linux Mint forum: https://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?t=116723

the conclusion for the future: everything you can achieve without windows, do without windows! because windows strictly ignores other systems, setups and so on... the easiest example is the setup: windows wipes all other OSes without a hassle...

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