[SOLVED] Minimum Size Needed for 8.04 dual boot with Vista?

[Bucky Ball]

Windoze (any flavour) cannot see EXT3 partitions at all. Just calls 'em healthy. If you go to;

Start->Control Panels->Administrative tasks (or tools, not sure)->Disk Management

... you will be able to identify by the sizes you have set, that is about all.

'Swap file' exists in Windoze and Ubuntu (or pagefile); when your ram overfloweth it goes to the page file. If you check in Windoze (from memory right click on 'My Computer', then Properties->Advanced->Virtual Memory I think! Somewhere there) you can check the size of the swap file and where it is.

For a better explanation of a swap file, go here:

http://searchwinit.techtarget.com/sD...213077,00.html

One this to remember is that a swap file is not as fast as physical RAM, so don't get too excited!

[snowpine]

Wow! Such rapid response.

Snowpine and Tamoneya:

I will be keeping my data on the Vista Partition and that is at 61 GB. The remainder is Ubuntu.

Can you explain what "Swap" is?

Also, why can't I see the Ubuntu partition from Vista (or can I in some place other than "Computer").

Thanks guys!

BTW: RAM is just under 1GB

Swap is like virtual memory in windows; if you run out of ram, it stores it on the hard drive. 1 or 2 GB of swap should be plenty for your needs. It is an extra partition formatted as "swap".

Someone else will give you a more technical response, but the bottom line is that Windows doesn't support the ext2/ext3 filesystems used by Linux. However, there are utilities you can get for Windows that get around this.

[Bucky Ball]

there are utilities you can get for Windows that get around this.

Most of them dodgy from the fine print on the information I've looked at. If you could find an open source program supported by the Ubuntu Community it would be the go. But something that has never quite been conquered to this point. Anyone got any thoughts? Maybe there is something in Synaptic or Add/Remove?

[tamoneya]

Now, I'm getting a little confused here and don't get me wrong ... but if the install and your programs come to 12GB say, isn't the stuff cramping you up the files you are creating, accumulating and storing on the same drive/partition as your operating system? ie you add them later.

Doing this is never a good idea (IMHO and regardless of OS). If Windoze crashes for some reason and you get blue screened, you effectively need to lose all your data (unless you've been very contientious) when you reinstall. Which is why it is never a good idea. Your personal data should be stored and address books, bookmark folders and everything else you can possibly set to do it should be aimed somewhere away from that partition/drive.

Something else to remember is when a hard drive crashes, it is normally as trivial as one bad sector. Which means that generally, the information on the partitions on that drive apart from the one that has crashed is usually retrievable (another reason to partition drives - that age old debate).

If you really want to be safe, have a partition set for only your operating system and programs (and some people don't even store programs on the same drive as OS for reasons of speed - multimedia/gamers) and store your personal data, files, folders etc somewhere else. Much simpler and safer in the long run, trust me.

I agree. I do this with my linux partitions but I dont trust vista to manage to understand something as complicated as a partition. I just prefer to maintain disk images which work better anyways since that way whether it is one small sector or a full blown head crash that scrapes up the entire disk I can just reimage a new disk and I dont even need to install the OS.

[Bucky Ball]

Neat, Tamoneya. Never thought of it. I'm going to have a look at how to do that a bit later. Thanks!

Just wondering though; how often would you make a backup disk image? I like the idea for once a week data backup, or even once a day if you are creating a lot of data or working on something major. Is there a way of automatically creating a disk image of your data drive/partition when you log out/shut down? Or once an hour?? Might take a bit of time, only problem. Either way, does limit how much you lose (not 2 years worth of data if you are diligent).

I think a combination of both our methods would provide pretty good data security!

[tamoneya]

Neat, Tamoneya. Never thought of it. I'm going to have a look at how to do that a bit later. Thanks!

Just wondering though; how often would you make a backup disk image? I like the idea for once a week data backup, or even once a day if you are creating a lot of data or working on something major. Is there a way of automatically creating a disk image of your data drive/partition when you log out/shut down? Or once an hour?? Might take a bit of time, only problem. Either way, does limit how much you lose (not 2 years worth of data if you are diligent).

I think a combination of both our methods would provide pretty good data security!

Well the simplest way is to just have one drive allocated for backups and just go like this : dd if=/dev/sda of=/dev/sdb. Then you automate it via a cron job. So you could set it whenever you want. And no matter how much data you have made it always takes up the same amount of space. The only down side is that you cant revert to your backup from last week. You can only use the most recent backup unless you use multiple drives and cron jobs.