Quick partitioning question...

[x C0MMAND0 x]

Background:

Currently I have my laptop hard drive all messed up with it's partitions, with Vista / ubuntu / recovery / media direct from dell. When Lucid is finally released, I am going to do a clean install. I also have a Windows 7 license and as much as I dislike Windows, I need it for work because I am in IT and need to be familiar with the system.

Problem:

Should I first install Windows 7 on the whole hard drive, and then install Ubuntu over it and shrink Windows to 50gb or so?

Should I first install Ubuntu and then install Windows 7?

Should I use gparted to partition my hard drive before hand and then install to each given section?

Any ideas/feedback/help/experience is welcome.

[MooPi]

Sounds like a wonderful time to experiment. But I think the two choices that should work the best would be partition first then install, and the second would be install 7 first resize the partition and install Ubuntu. I've used both methods and prefer using gparted then install. Make certain you format to a file system incompatible to Microsoft for your space reserved for Ubuntu.

[Paqman]

Should I use gparted to partition my hard drive before hand and then install to each given section?

Doing it this way could save a lot of time. Shrinking partitions can be really slow. At the very least, create an NTFS partition leaving the space for Ubuntu empty, install Windows, then install Ubuntu into the empty space.

[jimbren]

I'd do it exactly as Paqman suggested. Easier and faster than shrinking the partition later.


If you do decide to install Windows then shrink the partition, make sure you defrag from within Windows first, even if you're doing one install right after the other.

[Nisal]

what about installing inside windows

[undecim]

Partition ahead of time to save a lot of time.

A few things I would make sure of:

Install Windows first.

Make a /home/ partition for Ubuntu. The / partition can be 5-10 GB depending on how much stuff you install

Decide if you really need a swap partition. If you have 2GB or more ram, you probably won't ever use it unless you want to use the hibernation feature, in which case make sure you have more swap space than ram.

Make the Windows partition larger than the Ubuntu partition. Windows can't touch Ubuntu partitions, but Ubuntu can use Windows partitions. You can always symlink ~/Music/ and other folders to your folders on your Windows partition.

[jimbren]

what about installing inside windows

Personally, I'd do an install of Ubuntu and do a VM for Windows, but I suppose it depends on what you use more.

One of the advantages to doing it this way is that it's easier to recover if you have some kind of loss. I always make a separate partition for /home and do backups of it, including my Virtual Box VM. Then if I need to restore or decide to upgrade to the new release, I can leave /home alone and do a clean install.

[srs5694]

Make the Windows partition larger than the Ubuntu partition. Windows can't touch Ubuntu partitions, but Ubuntu can use Windows partitions. You can always symlink ~/Music/ and other folders to your folders on your Windows partition.

I disagree with this. As a general rule, I try to avoid giving any OS direct access to any other OS's installation/root filesystem, since doing so is inviting problems. Although NTFS-3g (which Ubuntu uses for its NTFS support) seems pretty solid, it's a third-party driver, and of course Linux has no innate understanding of Windows-specific files.

Instead, I recommend creating a Windows boot partition that's big enough for Windows and its programs, the Linux partitions already discussed here (root, /home, and swap), and another partition to hold shared data files. This last partition can be FAT if you don't expect to store files bigger than 4GB on it, but these days that's not a very safe assumption, so you may need to use NTFS or perhaps ext2fs or ext3fs along with Windows drivers for them. (I'm not sure how reliable the Windows ext2fs/ext3fs drivers are, though.) If you do it this way and keep the Windows boot partition from mounting in Linux, you greatly reduce the risk of accidentally damaging it from Linux.

[LewRockwellFAN]

I'd partition first. Either the W7 partitioner or Gparted - they both work fine. But you'll save a lot of work if you INSTALL W7 first, and to the first partition. Otherwise you'll have to grub about with GRUB. I'd give it 35 GB if you have plenty of room, but 20 should be ok. Ubuntu I'd give 15 GB although half that would be ok. Assuming you want to share data between the OSs I would use the rest of the space for a big fat FAT 32, if you'd like to be able to set and unset the read only attribs of files or an NTFS if you don't care about that (Ubuntu doesn't handle NTFS permissions properly yet). If you want the permissions propriety of FAT 32 but occasionally need to deal with a DVD iso or other file over 4 GB make one of each with the size according to how many such files you want to store. You can always split isos to store them on the FAT and join them prior to use in the NTFS if you need to.

[x C0MMAND0 x]

Partition ahead of time to save a lot of time.

A few things I would make sure of:

Install Windows first.

Make a /home/ partition for Ubuntu. The / partition can be 5-10 GB depending on how much stuff you install

Decide if you really need a swap partition. If you have 2GB or more ram, you probably won't ever use it unless you want to use the hibernation feature, in which case make sure you have more swap space than ram.

Make the Windows partition larger than the Ubuntu partition. Windows can't touch Ubuntu partitions, but Ubuntu can use Windows partitions. You can always symlink ~/Music/ and other folders to your folders on your Windows partition.

Why would I want a partition just for /home/, and I don't really know/understand what a swap partition is. I have 4gb of ram and never hibernate.

If I have a separate /home/ partition, then I would have 3 partitions

1. Windows 7 (30gb)
2. /home (?gb)
3. Ubuntu OS (?gb)

How do I know how big to make the /home/ partition? I am always adding new music / movies to my collection, so I need my /home/ to be really big. What is the advantage of having a separate /home/ partition?