Couldn't create more than 4 primary partitions in MBR

[Aragorn]

@gajeet

I did search for this error and came to know that MBR only allows 4 Primary partitions which I wish I knew it before . I read many solutions answering to delete any one partition or create a dynamic disk. But I don’t feel safe trying those solutions as the data on my partitions might get erased and deleting the partition may break the system and I might not be able to boot at all.

I guess that by “dynamic disk” they are talking of logical volume management (lvm2), which is a bit cumbersome to set up but does offer some possibilities with regard to snapshots et al. However, for your situation, it’s complete overkill.

Here’s what you can do… Remove your swap partition but don’t touch your three other partitions. Then, in the empty space previously occupied by the swap partition plus the remaining free space, create an extended partition. This is a special type of primary partition that itself can act as a container for other, logical partitions. Quite often ─ depending on the partitioning software ─ you may not even need to create an extended container, because it’ll automatically get created when you create a logical partition in the container.

So, to summarize…:

1. Delete the swap partition but don’t touch the first three partitions.
2. Create a 2 GiB swap partition as an extended partition in the free space. If its device special file is /dev/sda5, then you’ll know it has worked.
3. Create an additional volume for whatever you intend to use in the remaining free space. This will become /dev/sda6.