Recovery Partition Removed but Unable to format the space

[Javi]

Hi

I have been using an HP laptop which has three partitions C: F: and D: (Recovery). I have created the recovery disk from the recoevery manager and then deleted the partition. Once the partition was deleted the space acquired was merged with F: I then shrunk the F: partition and got around 60 GB space out of it.When I deleted the volume it shows as Unallocated space on the disk management console.

So till now there is no issue with it.Now when I am trying to create a new partition out of this unallocated space and format it NTFS. I am getting message that it cannot be formatted. Not sure what I am doing incorrectly to get this message.

Kindly provide any inputs that can help me format this unallocated space. Also I am trying to create this partition in order to install Linux Mint as I am trying to learn linux. Any help will be much appreciated.

 

[reedo_43]

Does not sound like you are doing anything wrong. Try this tool.

http://www.partitionwizard.com/

 

[molletts]

If you're planning to install Linux on the new partition, you're wasting your time trying to format it to NTFS. You'd be better off creating and formatting the partition from the Mint installer using whatever filesystem is the preferred one for Mint (probably ext4 but could be xfs or btrfs).

Stephen

 

[Javi]

If you're planning to install Linux on the new partition, you're wasting your time trying to format it to NTFS. You'd be better off creating and formatting the partition from the Mint installer using whatever filesystem is the preferred one for Mint (probably ext4 but could be xfs or btrfs).

Stephen

Now thats another thing that I am struggling with. While trying to boot using live disk I am getting options to choose the different modes. When choosing the first option the system does not even respond the disk drive stays up for around 20 seconds and then I get a blank screen with nothing on it. As you stated I would be better off without formatting the volume I certainly agree with you but in that case the live disk should at least respond as it should for installation to begin.

Following the steps shown in http://www.linuxbsdos.com/2014/06/11/how-to-dual-boot-linux-mint-17-and-windows-8-on-a-pc-with-uefi-firmware/ but it seems that the machine would just not respond.

When removing the live disk and restarting the machine it just boots up in win 8.

 

[reedo_43]

I believe the problem has to do with windows 8

https://askleo.com/how_do_i_boot_from_cddvdusb_in_windows_8/

 

[Javi]

I believe the problem has to do with windows 8

https://askleo.com/how_do_i_boot_from_cddvdusb_in_windows_8/

I will try the suggested link. I did read about UEFI/ secureboot but has not tried disabling the same. Will update after giving it a shot.
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So as suggested above I went through the link. The link did show me the way to change settings for UEFI.
Also I followed the following link to disable secureboot.
http://support.hp.com/in-en/document/c03653226#AbT1

Changing the boot order for Legacy was done to allow "Internal CD/DVD ROM Drive" to be the first option. But that did not work. Together with that I had to change UEFI boot order as well. Then only I was able to boot from the Live Disk.

Now having that sorted I now need to try installing Mint along side Win 8. I have around 60 GB unallocated space on the disk now. I am hoping that would be enough but the issue for which I started this thread still stands unresolved.

When I tried to format the unallocated space as a new volume in Win 8, Virtual Disk Manager gives me an error saying "The format did not complete successfully." But when I try to expand another partition(F drive) I am able to use this unallocated space.

Another way of doing this which I read somewhere is to expand the partition(F drive) and use all the unallocated space.Then while installing Mint it will give me an option to shrink the volume to take that extra space and use it. Not sure if that is the case though.

Any thoughts around this are very welcome.


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Finally I was able to install Mint on the unallocated space and use it all for different partitions. Glad to have reached this point as I really wanted to try Mint.

Thanks to all who provided their suggestions to help me with this.