Partition problems...

[johnnyflips]

Hi everyone. I am what you call a newbie, I guess anyone who has trouble getting it installed already has that label , huh? Anyway, I have two hdds. One is particularly small and contains windows. The other is 160g and I only use it for storage, of which 40g are taken. I want to install Ubuntu on the larger drive but it is formatted for windows and the setup program only gives me the option of splitting the windows partition, but I want to split the other one, and I don't have anywhere to store the other information to do a clean install. Is there some way to compact the information into a smaller partition and create a partition for Ubuntu. Please help,

[oldfred]

Dual boot 2 drives
http://members.iinet.net.au/~herman546/p24.html
Dual Boot win/10.04
http://members.iinet.net.au/~herman546/p23.html

I prefer to use gparted from the liveCD or download a separate gparted liveCD. Others may say Parted Magic is better.

If you set up partitions in advance you then can also include a separate /home. The auto installs just give you root (/) and swap.

I recommend root of 10-20GB when you have /home separate and swap of 2GB or RAM size if you want to hibernate and the rest as /home. You can label but do not use during partitioning.

You then have to use manual install and specify the partitions you created. On the last partition screen you need to use the advanced button if you have more than one drive. You want grub installed to the MBR of the same drive you install to. Then in BIOS set that drive as the boot drive.
http://members.iinet.net/~herman546/...nstall-now.png

[sandyd]

Hi everyone. I am what you call a newbie, I guess anyone who has trouble getting it installed already has that label , huh? Anyway, I have two hdds. One is particularly small and contains windows. The other is 160g and I only use it for storage, of which 40g are taken. I want to install Ubuntu on the larger drive but it is formatted for windows and the setup program only gives me the option of splitting the windows partition, but I want to split the other one, and I don't have anywhere to store the other information to do a clean install. Is there some way to compact the information into a smaller partition and create a partition for Ubuntu. Please help,

System -> Administration -> Gparted
select the drive (top right)
right click on the partition and resize it (note that resizing it by creating free space AFTER the partition is occasionally faster than creating it BEFORE).
Now go back to the ubuntu installer and at the partitioning stage, select "use largest block of free space"

oh, and don't do that if your using windows 7

[Mark Phelps]

Having done dual-booting for years, let me share some advice ...

Since you have separate drives, disconnect the MS Windows drive when you install Ubuntu. This will prevent the problem of overwriting the MS Windows MBR with GRUB.

Once you have Ubuntu installed, reconnect the MS Windows drive, but continue to boot from the UBuntu drive.

Then, open a terminal in Ubuntu and enter "sudo update-grub". This should auto-generate a new GRUB config file that will include an entry for booting MS Windows as well as Ubuntu.

[johnnyflips]

Thank you very much everyone. I compressed and repartitioned my hdd. Then as suggested I unhooked my "windows" drive and installed Ubuntu, shut down, plugged c: back in and windows loaded up. I tried unplugging c: and starting but got "no operating system. How do I plug in the c: drive and still load into Ubuntu? I feel stupid to not figure it out, but common sence told me to reboot with cd but it loaded into a live session and not the version on my hdd. Thanks for all your help

[oldfred]

You should be able to choose which drive to boot from in BIOS. Unless you have older IDE drives with master & slave settings.

[varunendra]

You should be able to choose which drive to boot from in BIOS. Unless you have older IDE drives with master & slave settings.

Correct!
Putting Ubuntu drive "BEFORE" the Windows drive in the "Boot Order" in BIOS is the simplest way. If any of your drives is SATA, then I assume your BIOS must be modern enough to provide the option to choose between the two drives- which one should boot first.

Just in case you have only IDE drives and such an old BIOS that doesn't provide the above option, then simply reset the jumper settings (on the backs of the hard-disks) to make Ubuntu drive "Master" & the Windows one "Slave", & connect them through same IDE cable.

[SRST Technologies]

Having done dual-booting for years, let me share some advice ...

Since you have separate drives, disconnect the MS Windows drive when you install Ubuntu. This will prevent the problem of overwriting the MS Windows MBR with GRUB.

Once you have Ubuntu installed, reconnect the MS Windows drive, but continue to boot from the UBuntu drive.

Then, open a terminal in Ubuntu and enter "sudo update-grub". This should auto-generate a new GRUB config file that will include an entry for booting MS Windows as well as Ubuntu.

This is a horrible way of doing it. First, when you disconnect the drive, you're taking the ability for GRUB to be written to the MBR (and there's only one that matters on any computer) which is pointless considering what you said to do later in the tutorial.

How are they to continue to boot from the Ubuntu drive when they reconnect the MS drive? You didn't tell them how to prevent Windows (which will be the first drive and thus the only MBR considered by the computer) from booting and how to use Ubuntu when he/she does this.

If you want them to update grub after magically stopping Windows and starting Ubuntu even though you didn't tell them how to do it, it's either going to complain that GRUB is not in the MBR, because the MBR that the OS will look at is the first hard drive, and that's going to have Windows on it. Or, it'll just write GRUB to the MBR of the Windows drive, which defeats the purpose of disconnecting the drive to preserve ntldr.

Don't do it. Just install Ubuntu on the second drive, and let it write the new boot sector, and it will automatically discover Windows when you install and let you pick it right from the beginning without having to open your case or muck about with disconnecting and reconnecting drives.

[johnnyflips]

Ok, I had to reinstall windows and now have windows on one drive, and Ubuntu on another, along with some windows storage. I ran Ubuntu as a live cd and sudo apt-install grub. It said it installed it but I still boot into windows. Should I change the order of my hdds now so that it tries to boot Ubuntu first, or just reinstall Ubuntu and let it do it's thing? With the windows drive hooked up this time. Thanks for all your help, I really appreciate it!!

[oldfred]

Do not physically change drives but in BIOS switch to boot the other drive.

If you have to rediscover windows

sudo update-grub

I always prefer not to disconnect drives but then you have to be very careful to use the advanced button to make sure where grub is installing itself. Of course you can easily reinstall grub or windows boot loaders if you do make a mistake.

How to restore the Ubuntu/XP/Vista/7 bootloader (Updated for Ubuntu 9.10)
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1014708
kansasnoob on grub or grub2 reinstall
http://ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php...6&postcount=41