how long should preparing disk space take?

[GreatestGravity]

Hey everyone,

I'm currently installing Ubuntu on a computer which previously had just Vista. I'm at the stage where it asks to partition the disk, I just went with the default suggestions, and now it's spent about 60 minutes or so with the progress bar stuck at 0. I know it says it should take a long time... but I'm worried. It's a 500GB hard drive, with about 200 GB currently used (all that kept in the vista partition). (I didn't defrag or repartition the hard drive through Vista, I should have but didn't think of it before popping the Ubuntu CD in.) Is this normal? How long should I let it sit before interrupting it? Or should I just wait until it either works or gives an error message?

Thanks for your help!

[upchucky]

interupt it, set up a partition of about 25 gig using knoppix, knoppix has both partition managers on it, once u create a partition for linux then install.

get advanced supergrub to help set up mbr if needed, (sometimes grub gets confused.)

[GreatestGravity]

Thanks! ...I actually was able to boot into Vista after interrupting it; I thought that it would break my windows boot, but it was repaired, it did some disk checking and booted fine. So now I'm using the Vista repartitioner.