Should I worry that I installed Ubuntu on the same disk that has windows 7 on it?

[Paneesh]

I've backed up all my personal and important data to an external hard drive.

[ajgreeny]

And you've mentioned,
"If you have two disks, it is cleaner and easier to succeed to install Ubuntu to the other disk (not the one with Windows). In that case it is easier and less risky to disconnect the Windows disk while installing."

So what does it mean to have "two disks?
Is lt like partitioning a new disk drive (like L:/ drive)?

You only have one physical hard disk in your machine; Windows unfortunately confuses many people by naming partitions on the same hard disk as "Disk", when in reality they are not separate disks at all.

If you need to make changes to the exisiting Windows 7 partition sizes, I think it is always best done using Windows 7's own disk-management tool; don't bother with any third party tool to do that.

After shrinking Windows partitions always boot back into windows and let the system run chkdisk (maybe twice) to make sure it is still all OK.

[Paneesh]

DONE!
I just processed "chkdsk"!
And also, as you said, I've created a new partition from C drive and reserved 22 gigs of space.

And thanks for clarifying me with the terms "partitioning" and "disks"! Literally, they confused me since I downloaded Ubuntu and wanted to install it!

So what's the next step?

[sudodus]

1. Boot the computer from the DVD disk.

2. Follow the guided dialogue of the installer until you reach to the partitioning window.

3. Then you should select Something else which actually means manual partitioning.

So you can select the partition that you have prepared to be the root partition, in this case the partition with 22 GB. The root partition is symbolized with a slash character, '/'. I recommend to format it to the linux filesystem ext4.

Usually the swap partition will be selected automatically.

At the bottom of the partitioning window there is a option to select where to install the bootloader. Check it, but with only one internal drive it should be pre-set correctly to the head of the internal drive, /dev/sda (there should be no partition digit).

4. And then I think it will be more straight-forward again (to follow the guided dialogue).

Good luck

[Paneesh]

Thank you very much for your help!
I've successfully installed Ubuntu on my computer without wubi installer!
And I've committed some previous errors and as a consequence, I'm facing disk partition issues.
Like I used to get asked to select the OS in the boot menu and the first option was Windows 7 and then Ubuntu, but now, the system directly boots to Ubuntu boot menu, and if I don't select Windows within 10 seconds, I'll be logged into Ubuntu.
I've messed up my disks while I installed, re-installed, partitioned disks, and deleting it for several times!

But I guess I'm gonna install both of the operating systems from the start one day when I find myself some free time!

Thanks for your help though!
Have a great day!

[ajgreeny]

It is quite normal for the first item in the grub menu to be the Linux OS in which grub is managed; if Windows 7 appeared first in the list previously that may be because you used wubi, which I have never seen in action and can not say what is normal, or it could be because you or someone else had reconfigured grub to boot to Windows first, which can be done very easily.

If both OSs will boot without error from choosing in grub I don't think you have made any errors with your partitions but have ended up with exactly what I would have expected.

[sudodus]

I'm glad it works for you now - even if things are not perfect

If you think that your problem is solved, please click on Thread Tools at the top of the page and mark this thread as SOLVED

[Paneesh]

Thank you for your help and being friendly throughout the process even though I was being like an noob
And for sure I'm going to mark this thread as "Solved"

[Paneesh]

Thank God! I was really worried that I had committed some mistake! And neither of the OS's return with an error message wile booting, so I'm good to work with them I guess!

Thanks for your support

[sudodus]

You are welcome