grj23
November 2nd, 2009, 02:09 AM
Hi
I'm gradually upgrading my computers to Ubuntu. I would have done this one a while back, but I came up on a little problem, and was hoping for some advice.
This laptop has a large ntfs partition, but it's got a bad sector. My understanding is I have to use ntfsresize with the --bad-sector option. However, I'm just a little bit nervous to fiddle, so thought I'd try to get some idea of the commands from someone who knows what they're doing.
My current harddrive looks like this:
/dev/sda1 fat16 DellUtility 117.63MiB
/dev/sda2 ntfs 226.66GiB (this is the one with the bad-sector - it seems to be stable, and I've run the chkdsk /f /r)
unallocated 7.84MiB
/dev/sda3 extended 2.5GiB
/dev/sda5 fat32 MEDIADIRECT 2.5GiB
/dev/sda4 fat32 DellRestore 3.6GiB
This set up seems to me a little bit wasteful of partitions, but I'm not sure how to proceed. My initial thought was to try to carve off 20-30GiB for the Ubuntu partition from sda2 and install Ubuntu there. sda2 has both my windows XP installation and my files (I know, I know). But then I see I'm suppose to have a swop partition and something else and it seems like I can't have too many partitions, so it's all just a bit awkward.
I'm leaving the question a bit open because I'd like higher level advice about how to reorganise things. I have an external harddrive, so could do an ntfsclone, which I gather is more than the simple back up of my documents which I've done so far! What I want is a dual boot, preferrably without having to reinstall the windows.
Some thoughts:
- can I make a DVD or something to replace the DellRestore and free up some partitions? And is it worth doing?
- What are the DellUtility and MediaDirect partitions, and do I need them?
- how would you reorganise and shuffle things around?
Thanks for your help!
I'm gradually upgrading my computers to Ubuntu. I would have done this one a while back, but I came up on a little problem, and was hoping for some advice.
This laptop has a large ntfs partition, but it's got a bad sector. My understanding is I have to use ntfsresize with the --bad-sector option. However, I'm just a little bit nervous to fiddle, so thought I'd try to get some idea of the commands from someone who knows what they're doing.
My current harddrive looks like this:
/dev/sda1 fat16 DellUtility 117.63MiB
/dev/sda2 ntfs 226.66GiB (this is the one with the bad-sector - it seems to be stable, and I've run the chkdsk /f /r)
unallocated 7.84MiB
/dev/sda3 extended 2.5GiB
/dev/sda5 fat32 MEDIADIRECT 2.5GiB
/dev/sda4 fat32 DellRestore 3.6GiB
This set up seems to me a little bit wasteful of partitions, but I'm not sure how to proceed. My initial thought was to try to carve off 20-30GiB for the Ubuntu partition from sda2 and install Ubuntu there. sda2 has both my windows XP installation and my files (I know, I know). But then I see I'm suppose to have a swop partition and something else and it seems like I can't have too many partitions, so it's all just a bit awkward.
I'm leaving the question a bit open because I'd like higher level advice about how to reorganise things. I have an external harddrive, so could do an ntfsclone, which I gather is more than the simple back up of my documents which I've done so far! What I want is a dual boot, preferrably without having to reinstall the windows.
Some thoughts:
- can I make a DVD or something to replace the DellRestore and free up some partitions? And is it worth doing?
- What are the DellUtility and MediaDirect partitions, and do I need them?
- how would you reorganise and shuffle things around?
Thanks for your help!