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gavin2233
June 13th, 2009, 05:21 AM
Hi I have vista at the moment and i have just bought a 350GB external hard drive. Can i get a step by step tutroial to install Ubuntu as a dual boot without getting rid of my windows files and programs?(or losing windows altogether because it's prebooted to my compy)

keplerspeed
June 13th, 2009, 05:26 AM
Do you want ubuntu on the external harddrive?

It may be easier just to partition your HD and install ubuntu alongside vista. This is quite simple, see:

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/GraphicalInstall

Or

http://www.psychocats.net/ubuntu/installing

gavin2233
June 13th, 2009, 05:41 AM
my vista hard Drive only has 50 GB left so i would prefer to install it on my external. Any help there?? BTW i have a laptop as well.

raisinglinux
June 13th, 2009, 05:58 AM
If you want to utilize your new hard drive, your only choice would be to swap the drive out depending on which OS you want to run. It sounds crazy but some users have a hot swap drive bay and have one drive per OS or config. Then simply insert the drive you want to boot with.

If you don't want to do that, you will need to partition and install.

But you still have a choice...if your new drive is larger than your old vista drive, simply clone the vista drive to the new hard drive and then partition and install Ubuntu. Here is a link on one way you can clone: http://raisinglinux.com/2009/utilities/ultimate-boot-cd-free-computer-repair-toolkit/

You can also install both drives and just choose a drive on each boot if you still want to utilize both.

Good luck...

gavin2233
June 13th, 2009, 06:12 AM
How would i go about doing the last option you said? ( I apologize i'm very new to partitioning)

raisinglinux
June 13th, 2009, 07:02 AM
Are you familiar with GParted?

After you clone, you can use GParted to make room for the Linux install...

Please use caution when doing this however...read the various docs etc with partitioning software...

------------------------
Raising Linux . com BLOG (http://raisinglinux.com)

gavin2233
June 13th, 2009, 04:00 PM
i'm not really familiar with anything right now for partitioning and that kind of stuff