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I am a new Linux user (deep breaths everyone) and I went through the guided install of Elementary OS Loki 0.4 alongside Win 10 somewhat successfully. The issue is that upon creating the new partitions for the file system I think that there have been some extra partitions thrown in.

I started with 125GB of free space on my HDD before the partitioning, although I was only able to adjust the amount of data for the separate OS and root partitions from only 100GB of free space. Using the file browser shows that there are in fact three devices named file system, 20GB Volume and 30GB Volume.

These extra partitions have only a few folders within that contain files (namely bin, root, dev and etc) of ~700MB each, so I'm not sure if these folders have important files on them or not.

Should I run Linux from a USB drive and remove these partitions if they are not important? I wouldn't mind some extra space for the root folder since I'm only left with 70GB of space.

Does anyone know if this is a known issue? Cheers.

EDIT - GParted shows that I have 3 of the ext4 partitions and one swap partition. All together these add up 27.97GB(/media/jackson/6b929d58-cea2-4e00-829d-9221249f11dc) + 18.70GB(/media/jackson/52c47ec7-fdab-410e-b2f6-520bac22485f) + 74.44GB(/) + 3.89GB(Swap) = 125GB.

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  • Does your / partition contain the bin, root, dev, and etc folders? If not, then the installer placed those files on the separate partition.
    – Axel Advento
    Commented Feb 24, 2017 at 9:12
  • Yes, all three partitions contain the folders listed.
    – Jackson
    Commented Feb 26, 2017 at 10:56
  • I'll rephrase my question to clear things up. Does the 74.44GB (/) partition contains the bin, root, dev, and etc folders or are they located on a different partition?
    – Axel Advento
    Commented Feb 26, 2017 at 11:50
  • Hope you're not deleting anything yet as those folders probably a legit part of the current install and not duplicates or misplaced ones
    – Axel Advento
    Commented Feb 26, 2017 at 11:51
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    I haven't deleted anything yet - at least not until I'm certain of what I'm doing. If I understand your question completely, the 74.44GB partition does contain the bin, root, dev and etc folders, although to make things confusing the other two partitions also contain folders with the same names. For example, the bin folder in the partition mounted / contains 160 files/13.1MB whereas the bin folders on the other two partitions contain 194 files/13.3MB. I've noticed that the grub boot loader also has two more boot options for the two extra partitions, though I haven't tried them.
    – Jackson
    Commented Feb 27, 2017 at 12:59

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Copying the answer from the comments since we seem to find the cause of extra partitions.

I did have attempt installs which ran into errors (twice I think - Possibly why there are two extra partitions?) before re-writing the .iso files to the usb drive and finally getting through the install. If that explains the extra partitions, should I be free to delete those partitions or should I boot from the usb drive before attempting that?

Yes, that's probably the reason. If you have no important files on your Linux partitions and want a fresh start, feel free to delete all those partitions except for the Windows ones (be careful not to delete the Windows system/boot partitions).

You can use the Windows's Disk Management tool if you're more familiar with it (plus gives the extra protection from deleting Windows boot partitions). Elementary can handle anything the Disk Management tool throws at it.

Hope that helps.

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