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Bernie_Marquardt
March 29th, 2015, 04:29 AM
Am trying to install Xubuntu 14.10 alongside Vista. My situation is this: Have a Windows partition, an allocated space which I would like Xubuntu to use, and a recovery partition for Vista. So when I click ' Install alongside Windows' , it reports that it will use partitions sda4/sda5; how can I be sure it will not destroy my recovery partition? If I click 'something else', it goes back automatically to 'Install alongside windows', without allowing me that choice. How can I proceed? Thanks in advance for your help.

fantab
March 29th, 2015, 09:10 AM
Lets look at your partitions, boot from Ubuntu DVD/USB and Try Ubuntu.
Open Terminal and run the following one after another:

sudo fdisk -l
sudo parted -l

... and post the output of the commands.

Bernie_Marquardt
March 29th, 2015, 04:20 PM
Thanks, fantab.


Here is the results:

Boot Size ID Type
/dev/sda1 * 197.7G 7 HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
/dev/sda2 450MB 27 Hidden/NTFS/WinRE
/dev/sda4 11.1G 7 HPFS/NTFS/exFAT

Parted:
1 212GB primary ntfs boot
2 472MB primary ntfs diag
3 12GB primary ntfs

Hope that gives enough to work with. Did write down the starting sector/ending sector.

Bashing-om
March 29th, 2015, 05:59 PM
Bernie_Marquardt; Hello;

Here's the deal. in the legacy - MBR - partitioning scheme there is a 4 PRIMARY partition limit. Windows is presently using 3 of those 4 possible partitions. ubuntu requires 2 partitions as a minimum to install. a partition for the 'root' filesystem and a 'swap' partition.
The way around this 4 primary partition limit is to make up one of those primary partitions as an 'extended' partition. This 'extended' partition is a container to hold addition 'logical' partitions. ubuntu is happy to install to these logical partitions.

I suspect that if you had of let the install wizard take control of setting up the partitions, it would have made up the 'logical' partition, and installed "along side of" Windows. As is now - and better in the long run - you have decided for yourself how you want ubuntu to install, and must make the provisions to utilize the "something else" install option.

At this time to aid us in further guidance, please provide a screen shot of what the ubuntu partitioner sees;
From the liveDVD in try ubuntu mode, activate 'GParted' from the dash. We can then see what the state of the hard drive is space wise. Is there "unallocated space" sufficient to install ubunto onto ?


ain't no step for a stepper

Mark Phelps
March 29th, 2015, 06:44 PM
an allocated space which I would like Xubuntu to use,

You can't use that space. Allocated means already assigned to a filesystem, and looking at the command results, ALL your partitions are Windows filesystem -- which Xubuntu can't use for installation.

You're going to have additional problems if you start messing around with the partition sizes and spaces on your drive. One problem is that the last partition is most likely your recovery partition. IF you move or shrink that, you most likely will not be able to use the built-in recovery option anymore.

The only partition that you could actually shrink (presuming there is room to spare) is sda1 -- but that is your Vista OS partition, and if that gets corrupted in any way, you will not be able to reboot into Vista -- making it very hard to fix.

So ... the very first thing you would need to do is do a full image backup of your partitions to an external drive. If you are willing to do that, then do the following:
1) Download and install Macrium Reflect to Vista
2) Connect your external drive
3) Run MR to do a complete backup of all your partitions to the external drive
4) Use the MR option to create and burn a Boot CD. You will need this later if you need to do a restore from the external drive.

If you're not prepared or willing to do that backup, then my advice is to go no further. Any OS installation and partition manipulation comes with the risk of overwriting and/or corrupting existing filesystems and data. Without a backup, you would have no way of recovering if anything goes wrong.

Bernie_Marquardt
March 29th, 2015, 09:37 PM
Thanks, bashing-om and Mark Phelps.
Here is the latest, as bashing-om suggested. When I click on 'install Ubuntu alongside Windows', here is what comes up:
The partition tables of the following devices are changed:
SCSI3(0,0,0) (sda)
The following partitions are going to be formatted:
partition #5 of SCSI3 (0,0,0) (sda) as ext4
partition #6 of SCSI3 (0,0,0) (sda) as swap

When I chose 'Something else', then it gives me these choices:

size used
/dev/sda1 ntfs 212310 MB 65572 MB Windows Vista loader
free space 25305 MB
/dev/sda2 ntfs 471 MB 235 MB
/dev/sda3 ntfs 11967 MB 8676 MB Windows Vista loader

Device for boot loading:
/dev/sda ATA ST3250310AS (250.1 GB).

Hope that gives some more ideas.

Bashing-om
March 29th, 2015, 11:12 PM
Bernie_Marquardt; Hey ....

Like Mark advises, make a backup of Windows now. We do not know the state of the partitions and any time partitions are "changed" there is always that risk of data loss.
Before we make any additional advise, will behoove us to see what the hard drive situation is.
post back the screen shot from GParted depicting all the drives on the system.

Sorta as an aside; As you are a new user to ubuntu, I would expect the default set up that the install wizard (install along side) sets to be just fine good and dandy. But again, we do not know what might have been done that alters these Windows' partitions ! Once you are familiar with ubuntu if desired you can then re-partition more to your use case.

It is your system


it is all up to you what you want to do

Bernie_Marquardt
March 31st, 2015, 02:28 AM
Did the backup. Then I installed Xubuntu by using the freespace and partitioning it myself. Everything worked fine. I am able to get into Windows and into Xubuntu.
Thank you all for your input.

Bashing-om
March 31st, 2015, 03:31 AM
Bernie_Marquardt; Outstanding !

You do good work .




Welcome to our world

Bernie_Marquardt
March 31st, 2015, 03:53 AM
Well, if it hadn't been for the tips of you guys, I would have been quite unsure on how to proceed.
Thanks also, bashing-om for the link on Help documentation.