Member Avatar for Stuugie

Hi All,

I've had Ubuntu for a couple of months now and I'm having problems with the boot drive/partition. I have a total of 500 GB to work with but for some reason that I didn't notice Ubuntu installed using only a (very) small portion of my 500 GB and now I cannot update my laptop anymore because I am having storage issues. What can I do to resolve this issue? Any help would be very much appreciated!

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Dani AI

Generated

Short summary and safe next steps. ’s machine is almost certainly using a very small root partition while the rest of the disk is unused or sitting in other partitions; that makes package updates fail when / fills. was on the right track pointing to partition tools. Before making changes: back up any irreplaceable files, make a bootable live USB, and work from the live session so the root filesystem is not mounted.

First, inspect what you actually have so you know which path to take. Run these (from your installed system or a live session) to see devices, sizes and mounts:

lsblk -o NAME,SIZE,FSTYPE,MOUNTPOINT,UUID
df -hT /
blkid

Look for (a) unallocated space on the same disk, (b) another large partition you can shrink, or (c) LVM usage (logical volumes). If you see unallocated space adjacent to the root partition, expanding is straightforward. If root is inside LVM, the steps are different.

Concrete safe workflows (high level):

  • Non-LVM ext4 root: boot a live USB, use a partition editor in the live session to enlarge the partition into adjacent free space, then run a filesystem check and grow the filesystem:
    sudo e2fsck -f /dev/sdXY
sudo resize2fs /dev/sdXY
  • LVM root: extend the PV/LV then grow the filesystem:
    sudo pvdisplay
sudo lvextend -L +N G /dev/mapper/<vg-name>-<lv-name>
sudo resize2fs /dev/mapper/<vg-name>-<lv-name>

    Always check filesystem type first (ext4 vs XFS) because XFS uses xfs_growfs and cannot be shrunk.

External drive not recognized: rule out hardware first (cable, power, different USB port). Then plug it in and run:

dmesg | tail -n 50
lsusb
lsblk -o NAME,SIZE,FSTYPE,MOUNTPOINT

If the device shows but partitions do not, try mounting manually. If it is NTFS and the system lacks NTFS support, install ntfs-3g once you have space or test the drive on another machine. If dmesg shows I/O or enclosure errors, try a different cable or direct SATA connection — many enclosures fail even when the drive is OK.

If resizing feels risky, reinstalling with manual partitioning (allocate most of the disk to root or use separate /home) is a tidy alternative.

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Member Avatar for Assembly Guy

Do you mean that Ubuntu set up a tiny partition and is only using that? Maybe post a summary of sudo cfdisk /dev/your-hdd-or-disk-or-whatever. You can extend and shrink partitions fairly safely using gParted, remembering to run it from a disk which isn't the one you're changing.

Edited by Assembly Guy
Member Avatar for Stuugie

Yes that seems to be exactly what Ubuntu did but I don't recall being notified when I installed Ubuntu. I am at work right now and will run the summary in about 8 hours. I appreciate your help as I am still relatively new to Linux.

Member Avatar for Stuugie

Well you've no doubt put me on the right path so I'll mark this as solved. However, I am having some issues with my external hard drive not being recognized on my laptop. I guess that's the snowball effect.

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