Deleting Partitions

[darkod]

Well, you can't worry about every little thing in this world, right?

In reality, the windows bootloader on the MBR is not even a bootloader. It's only a small piece of code that continues the boot process where the boot flag is. That's why it's easy to reproduce it even with linux tools.

The thing is that grub2 is not designed to work on a partition, and that's where you have to install it if you don't install it on the MBR. If vista doesn't even work, I think you are giving too much thought to the windows bootloader. Simply use grub2 and you can restore the windows bootloader when you want to.

If you do install ubuntu/lubuntu, note that you can't simply delete the ubuntu partition in future. It's better to restore the windows bootloader first, test that vista is booting, and only then delete the linux partitions on your disk.

But all of that is not very important or urgent, we are talking about IF and WHEN you want to remove ubuntu.

More important is the fact that your hdd doesn't have unallocated space on it. Almost all hdd belongs to the vista partition. You need to shrink it so that unallocated space is created.
But shrinking vista is best to be done by windows Disk Management. If you can't boot vista, you can't do that.
How did you plan to create the unallocated space for ubuntu?

If vista is not working, personally I would back up all personal data from it, and reinstall it on a smaller partition, so that it leaves space for ubuntu on the end of the disk. That will have two benefits:
1. Ubuntu will have space to install without shrinking any partition.
2. You will also get a working vista installation.

In this situation it's pointless to keep vista and on top of that you are getting so worried about it and its bootloader.

[anon_private]

Well, you can't worry about every little thing in this world, right?

In reality, the windows bootloader on the MBR is not even a bootloader. It's only a small piece of code that continues the boot process where the boot flag is. That's why it's easy to reproduce it even with linux tools.

The thing is that grub2 is not designed to work on a partition, and that's where you have to install it if you don't install it on the MBR. If vista doesn't even work, I think you are giving too much thought to the windows bootloader. Simply use grub2 and you can restore the windows bootloader when you want to.

If you do install ubuntu/lubuntu, note that you can't simply delete the ubuntu partition in future. It's better to restore the windows bootloader first, test that vista is booting, and only then delete the linux partitions on your disk.

But all of that is not very important or urgent, we are talking about IF and WHEN you want to remove ubuntu.

More important is the fact that your hdd doesn't have unallocated space on it. Almost all hdd belongs to the vista partition. You need to shrink it so that unallocated space is created.
But shrinking vista is best to be done by windows Disk Management. If you can't boot vista, you can't do that.
How did you plan to create the unallocated space for ubuntu?

If vista is not working, personally I would back up all personal data from it, and reinstall it on a smaller partition, so that it leaves space for ubuntu on the end of the disk. That will have two benefits:
1. Ubuntu will have space to install without shrinking any partition.
2. You will also get a working vista installation.

In this situation it's pointless to keep vista and on top of that you are getting so worried about it and its bootloader.

Gparted says that there is unallocated space (1.58 MiB).

If you confirm the command, I will post the information.

sudo gparted - yes/no.

If I can't use the install facility as it is in Lubuntu, I'll leave things as they are, or re-consider installing Lubuntu alongside Vista

Thanks

[oldfred]

If a graphical app you should use graphical sudo from command line or gksu or gksudo.

gksudo gparted

Forum rules on root vs. sudo
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1486138
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/RootSudo
http://xkcd.com/149/


https://help.ubuntu.com/community/WindowsDualBoot
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Re...tallingWindows
How to restore the Ubuntu/XP/Vista/7 bootloader
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Re...ta/7Bootloader

[darkod]

Yeah, sudo gparted is safe. That's how you can start it from the terminal but it doesn't do anything until you tell it to, it only starts the program.
In fact, since Gparted is graphical program, if you want to start it from terminal it's better with:
gksu gparted

For graphical programs you use gksu in place of sudo.

It might show unallocated space of 1.5MiB between partitions but have you thought what can you do with 1.5MiB?

A larger word document is larger than that. You need many more GBs for the OS, not MBs.

[anon_private]

Yeah, sudo gparted is safe. That's how you can start it from the terminal but it doesn't do anything until you tell it to, it only starts the program.
In fact, since Gparted is graphical program, if you want to start it from terminal it's better with:
gksu gparted

For graphical programs you use gksu in place of sudo.

It might show unallocated space of 1.5MiB between partitions but have you thought what can you do with 1.5MiB?

A larger word document is larger than that. You need many more GBs for the OS, not MBs.

Hi,

Yes, you are right. It is not much space.

I am looking for an easy and safe way of forming the partitions.

There may not be one. If that is the case, I'll consider either using the live Lubuntu pendrive (as I am at present), or installing alongside Vista.

Best wishes.

A

[darkod]

But installing along vista means that ubuntu will be installed on linux partitions next to the existing vista partition. That still means there will need to be unallocated (unpartitioned) space on the hdd where the linux partitions will be placed.

If there is no such space, the installer can shrink the vista partition, but as i mentioned windows doesn't like linux tools to shrink its system partition. It's best to do it from within vista. But you say you can't boot it, so you can't do that either.

The choice is yours. I still say better to get your data out, reinstall a working vista, then shrink it or not depending how you installed it (whether on the whole hdd or leaving unallocated space for ubuntu), and then install ubuntu.

[Bucky Ball]

Make free space, create an extended partition, stick whatever you want on logical partitions in that. Just remember, four primary partitions is the limit. So, three primarys with an extended and as many logical partitions as you like inside that is the way to go (Win usually wants two or three primary partitions anyhow).

You don't need much more than 10 - 15Gb partitions to install Ubuntu and if you are just trying it out and not stacking data in there, probably less.

[anon_private]

Make free space, create an extended partition, stick whatever you want on logical partitions in that. Just remember, four primary partitions is the limit. So, three primarys with an extended and as many logical partitions as you like inside that is the way to go (Win usually wants two or three primary partitions anyhow).

You don't need much more than 10 - 15Gb partitions to install Ubuntu and if you are just trying it out and not stacking data in there, probably less.

Thank you for responding.

I do not understand the concept of extended partitions.

Best wishes.

A

But installing along vista means that ubuntu will be installed on linux partitions next to the existing vista partition. That still means there will need to be unallocated (unpartitioned) space on the hdd where the linux partitions will be placed.

If there is no such space, the installer can shrink the vista partition, but as i mentioned windows doesn't like linux tools to shrink its system partition. It's best to do it from within vista. But you say you can't boot it, so you can't do that either.

The choice is yours. I still say better to get your data out, reinstall a working vista, then shrink it or not depending how you installed it (whether on the whole hdd or leaving unallocated space for ubuntu), and then install ubuntu.

Thank you for replying.

As a matter of interest, If I decided to make a persistent Lubuntu LiveCD would it be better to use Unetbootin to simply create the USB, or make a partition for Lubuntu and then use Unetbootin?. In the case of the latter, how could I ensure that Unetbootin installs the files into the correct partition.

The USB will also contain a personal folder containg files.

[darkod]

For persistant usb you simply create it with unetbootin and specify the size allocated to the persistant file. You don't create partitions on the hdd.

[anon_private]

For persistant usb you simply create it with unetbootin and specify the size allocated to the persistant file. You don't create partitions on the hdd.

I have never made a persistent USB, is there an advised size for the persistent file?

Can I view the USB using GParted?

I considered partitions because I thought that working with the USB would give me some experience of working with partitions without risk.

Am I right in assuming that if I decided to replace Vista with Lubuntu and the system crashed at some stage, then I could lose all my data?

Thanks