Ubuntu Installation :: How To Partition Drives For A Dual-boot
Aug 9, 2011
I've been using ubuntu exclusively on my two laptops lately, for coding and all of my other work. I plan on installing it onto my desktop now for work as well, but I would like to retain Windows 7 so I don't have to worry about compatibility for all of the games I love to play. My question is this:When setting up my partitions, how much space (and what format) should I set aside for windows to write and read games from? I have a 500GB hard drive currently, and was planning the partitions as:
1. Windows 7 (NTFS, setup with Windows installer) ~20 GB
2. File Storage (NTFS, set up with the Ubuntu install partitioner) ~452 GB
3. Ubuntu (EXT3, set up with Ubuntu install partitioner) ~ 20 GB
4. Swap (~2x the size of my RAM) ~ 8GB
The plan is to have Windows install and execute games from the NTFS File Storage partition, while being able to access the same partition from Ubuntu for my documents, code files, music, etc.I don't know if this would work, and I'm also not sure what my file system will be like (windows or linux-y?) if it did. Will this work? Or is there a more elegant solution?
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Dec 10, 2010
recently sent up another computer as follows:Two sata drives. Windows 7 was installed on the first drive(sda)and booted successfully. This drive was disconnected ( I have had some installs where Unbuntu wipes out the existing C drive eventhough I am installing to D) and Ubuntu was installed to the second drive (sdb). At one point I had to rebuild the grup on the Ubuntu drive and was careful to make it installed on the Ubuntu drive. To my surprise when the PC booted up I saw the Grub menu with a menu entry for Windows. The Windows drive was always the primary drive before the Ubuntu install. I was planning on the Windows drive being the boot drive and using a boot manager to determine where to go from there. If I utilize the BIOS boot option (F12) I can boot each drive individually. I cannot in BIOS set a particular drive to boot - just a hard drive. Everything is working I am just curious why the primary drive does not boot first. IN BIOS the Windows drive is a primary SATA with a lower number that the Ubuntu drive which is listed as a secondary drive.
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Feb 15, 2011
I can only use the Live CD to operate Ubuntu. After typing in the command sudo fdisk -l, I get the following?
Disk /dev/sda: 320.1 GB, 320072933376 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 38913 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
[Code]....
And when I boot without the Live CD, I get the following message in the GNU GRUB Version 1.98-1ubuntu7 window page.
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May 1, 2010
this may be a very stupid question, but. My computer has two hard drives. One has Windows XP installed on it. The other is blank.
Is it possible for me to install Ubuntu onto the second hard drive, and run a dual-boot using GRUB during startup? Or does it only work when both OSs are on the same hard drive?
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May 4, 2010
I would like to install Ubuntu 10.04 on my new 1 TB hard drive. I currently have Windows XP installed on a 160 GB hard drive for things that I cannot do on Ubuntu. I would like to know if it's possible to install the other hard drive, and then dual boot Windows with it? Effectively dual booting across two hard drives. I wouldn't care if GRUB replaces the standard Windows bootloader, just as long as I can choose between the two at startup
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Jun 4, 2011
I have Ubuntu 11.04 on 1TB HDD and Win 7 on another 1TB HDD. Right now I have to unplug a SATA cable to get to boot into one or the other. What is the best way to be able to pick. I don't care which OS I do it in or which is the primary, if there has to be one. I have an MSI mobo.
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Mar 8, 2011
I am trying to install ubuntu 10.10 and windows 7 on my hard drive. I want to install both the OS on seperate drives. can anyone tell how to do it? I know that there are screenshots on ubunutu site itself but i am new to ubuntu and I am unable to follow instructions.
I first installed ubuntu 10.10 in dec 2010 using my ubuntu dvd. Now I am reinstalling it again but the setup screens have changed? hows that possible? i mean its the same disk. does anyone know why? or am i drunk.
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Apr 14, 2011
I have recently built a new system which has two internal sata drives. The plan was to install windows 7 one drive and ubuntu 10.10 on the second drive for KVM hosts. I started with the windows install which completed, then I went forward and installed ubuntu 10.10 64bit to my second drive (sdb). During the installation I chose to manually partition my drive. i partitoned the drive (sdb) as follows
/boot - 1gb
/ 40gb
swap 16gb
extended partion of 400gb
I then selected sdb to hold the boot record, as it was set by default to sda (my windows drive). The OS installed fine. I then went to reboot my system so go back into windows, by selecting the first drive in the bios. Once selected the system keeps booting into Ubuntu, no matter which drive I select. Now I checked the grub.cfg file and i see all references to hd1 there is no reference for windows found. I then proceeded to do 'sudo update grub2' this did not pickup any reference to my windows droive to add to the grub menu. When i select the ubuntu drive to boot fom my bios, i get no grub menu appaer it just boots quite happily into ubuntu. Can anyone please provide any resoloution to this, I can provide additonal outputs regarding my partion tables etc. later this evening when I get back from work.
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Jun 8, 2011
Is it possible to create a dual boot system from two separate disk drives each having been created as a single boot computer? I have an 80gb disk drive with Windows XP installed on it. I have a 160gb disk drive with Ubuntu 11 installed on it.
I have installed the Windows disk drive as drive 0 and the Ubuntu disk drive as drive 1 in my computer. Each disk drive was set with cable select pin settings. The computer boots to windows. If at all possible, how would I go about setting up the system to dual boot to both windows and Ubuntu? I have attached screen shots of part -l, gparted 80gb disk and gparted 160gb disk.
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Jun 4, 2010
I have the following PC set up:
Dell 8400 with 3 GB of RAM with 3 160 GB SATA drives:
The first one has Windows XP installed on it.
The second one has been newly formatted and Ubuntu 10.04 has just been installed on it (20 GB / and 6 GB swap) with grub being installed on the first partition and not the master boot record. The remainder will be for storage for Windows.
The third drive is simply storage for Windows.
At this point I am able to boot XP just fine, but I'm not able to boot Linux. I just getting a blinking cursor or the PC just reboots when I choose Linux. I believe I have set up my boot.ini properly using:
C:Bootsectc.lnx="Linux Ubuntu"
After running dd if=/dev/sdc1 of=bootsect.lnx bs=512 count=1 and putting that file in place.
For reference, I don't believe this is a Linux problem, as much as I am simply trying to guide the ntldr to be properly pointed to a place where it can boot Linux. When I go into the bios and disable the first and the third hard drives, grub pops right up and I'm able to boot Linux with no problem, so that piece is fine. I think it's just now trying to get the correct syntax so I can boot Linux without having to disable drives and reenable them.
For kicks I even tried these syntax types in boot.ini:
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)="Linux11"
(i.e. 2nd disk, 1st partition ...etc...)
I read many troubleshooting documents on dual booting and so forth but I just can't get this right. For reference, I stated the way XP views my Hard Drives in the intro, which seem to be a different order than Linux sees them, yet I believe I've tried all the combos of settings for this to work (yet clearly have not). I have attached the output of boot_info_script*.sh here: [URL]. Boot Info Script 0.55 dated February 15th, 2010 ..... Devices which don't seem to have a corresponding hard drive.
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Jun 21, 2010
I'm a n00b at dual booting and I plan on installing Ubuntu 10.04 on a separate hard drive than my Windows 7 64 bit one in a dual boot situation. I have read that you can do this by unplugging the Windows hard drive, install Ubuntu on the other one, and than plug the Windows hard drive back in and everything will be fine and dandy. Is this correct? If it is, will I have to manually set the Primary and Secondary drive (in the BIOS I think?), or will it automatically do that.
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May 29, 2011
I've been trying to properly install grub for the past 3 days and failing every time.I recently bought a new computer and would like to dual boot Windows 7 64 and Natty. On my previous machines, ubuntu installer has automatically detected windows. It does not do so on this machine.I have three hard drives: 2 ssd's and a single 3 tb drive for storage.
I would like one ssd for windows 7 and one for natty.Currently, I am able to boot into both OS's but only by altering the boot sequence of the drives from the bios. I am hesitant to install grub to the windows drive for fear I will lose the ability to boot into windows. I did this early in the discovery process and ended up having to reinstall windows.
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May 1, 2011
I've used it once before but got fed up with the boot asking me everytime I turned my laptop on because I wasn't using it enough. I have Windows 7 on drive C . I want to keep it on drive C. I have several 1.5TB+ drives, and one of them is not being used. I want to dedicate it to Ubuntu, and be able to do a dual boot with my Windows 7 install. Is this possible? If it is, what about when this drive is not connected to my laptop? Will that mess up the boot process?
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Jun 17, 2010
I need a suggestion on setting up a dual boot menu for my setup. I have two hard drives one with WinXP and a second one with CentOS 5.3 installed. I basically moved the hard drive from another identical machine to this one and so I want to setup a boot menu to access either windows or Linux. CentOS already has grub on it.
What is the simplest method of setting up the dual boot menu? I would like something which is easy to administer which I can just ghost over either the Linux drive or Windows drive or disconnect either and have either boot just fine. I don't ask for much do I?
If I have to go through a little process after ghosting over one or the other drives that would probably be ok. We get updated images for this machine and replace the image on the drives with new images, although Linux shouldn't be reimaged, just windows. So the Linux drive (2nd drive) should not be touched normally.
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Feb 9, 2009
i'm tying to dual boot Vista64 (already installed) and Fedora 10 x86_64. I am running a Dell XPS 410 running 2 sata hard drives raid 0 (ICH8DH). I started the process by shrinking my C drive on disk0 leaving 64.45GB of unallocated space. Next I rebooted into Fedora install DVD and when i get to blue graphical install screen i get message asking if my drive is GPT and if it is it may be corrupted. I click NO, and it comes up with a message telling me i have to initialize my drive if i want to use it ( have to click NO twice) and if i do it i will lose all my data.
i can click no and keep proceding through the install until i get to the partition setup screen. No hard drives or partitions are shown. I've tried googling the problem and get bits of pieces of information scattered in different parts but nothing conclusive to my problem i think. As far as my background of knowledge goes, I'm new to the linux community but give me a thorough guide and i'll do fine (i hope). I've been using fedora on a separate laptop for 2 days now .
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Jan 5, 2011
if having a boot partition is recommended for dual boot installation of Ubuntu 10.04 and Windows 7 and why?
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Feb 15, 2010
After installing karmic with Grub2 I am unable to boot into Archlinux partition. Grub2 has removed the last line of the Archlinux boot stanza! It used to read:-
[Code]....
Following the Grub2 tutorials I have tried editing /etc/grub.d/40_custom as follows:-
[Code]....
But no luck. Only way into Archlinux is to get into the edit shell and manually add the missing line and remove other stuff not needed. I have spent hours trying to resolve this issue and I am fairly p----d off
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Jan 21, 2010
I'm trying to understand how I can partition my hard disk to allow for a dual boot (Windows & Ubuntu) as well as allow access to a certain set of files from both Windows & Ubuntu. So far I understand that I'll need:
1 Windows boot partition ~2-4GB
1 Linux boot partition ~2-4GB
1 Linux swap partition ~1-2 GB
But I don't know:How can I keep my non-boot linux files & folders -- /home, /usr, etc. -- separate from the boot files? Do I need another partition? If yes, what size & format -- FAT32, ext3, etc. -- should it be?
If I separate, for instance, the "/home" folder only where do the remaining folders and files reside?
How can I access certain files with both Windows & Ubuntu? Do I need yet another partition, formatted in FAT32?
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Apr 24, 2010
I would like to install XP to /dev/sda5,sda6 being karmic. (I may have a dying dvd burner as was unable to install it yesterday but..) I got in a dreadful mess with grub after attempting to upgrade to Lucid,I needed to reinstall anyway. Will I be able to dual boot or should I just start from scratch?
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Feb 18, 2010
I must say that until now I have worked with Win2000/Xp. Long time ago I worked with Xenix and in the last 2 month sometimes with Ubuntu.Now I have brought a new PC with 320Gb HD and 4 Gb RAM, and I wish to built a dual boot system, with Win7 and Ubuntu.
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Feb 22, 2010
Absolute newbie to Linux (assume I'm a complete dummyhead. I don't understand anything about Linux.). Just bought 500GB HDD. Made 3 partitions, 1 for Linux, 1 for Windows, and 1 for data.
1st, installed Win XP on 2nd partition (NTFS)
Then installed 64-Bit Ubuntu on 1st partition (Ext4)
(Created a 2 GB partition and for the swap file.)
Not sure which partition is primary, extended, etc., never really understood all that stuff anyways. XP was working perfectly, till I installed Ubuntu. Now, it just boots straight into Ubuntu, doesn't give the option to boot into XP. Tried everything I know, but it will not give the option to go into XP.
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Aug 4, 2010
I have created 5 partitions:2 GB ext320 GB ext310 GB ext320 GB ntfs400 GB ntfsI have already installed XP on 20GB ntfs. Will dual boot work if I use the 3 ext3 partitions to install Ubuntu?
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Jan 30, 2011
I have Ubuntu 10.10 on my laptop currently and my mom would like to have it on hers as well. However, she does not want to get rid of Windows 7, or use Wubi (for some reason). So, my only choice is to dual boot it. While I was installing it onto my laptop there was an option to choose the partitioning. There wasn't an option to do this on my her laptop though because you can only have 4 partitions on a hard drive apparently. The partitions are:
NAME (TYPE)
System (NTFS)
C: (NTFS)
Recovery (NTFS)
HP TOOLS (FAT32)
Is there anyway to backup a partition (Like Recovery) and make it bootable from a flash drive/CD? Or is there any other work around from this?
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Jun 7, 2010
I am trying to install Ubuntu 10.04 LTS on a Windows XP Media Centre Edition system.On the Step 4 of the installation which usually gives you the option to partition the disk but it only gives me the option to Erase the entire disk or specify partition manually, although this also doesn't allow anything other than totally erasing the disk. I'd ideally like to keep my Windows and I have installed Ubuntu before (but 9.10) on a different system.
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Mar 22, 2010
System Layout:
Alienware M17 Laptop
2.26 GHz Quad-Core CPU
4.0 GB DDR3 RAM
Hard Drive #1: Toshiba 500 GB 7200 RPM
Hard Drive #2: Toshiba 100 GB 7200 RPM
What I was thinking of doing was putting Windows 7 Ultimate (64-bit) and Ubuntu 9.10 (64-bit) on the 100 GB hard drive - with just under a 75/25 split towards W7 (approximately 70 GB for W7 and 22 GB for Ubuntu). Would this be optimal, having the operating systems on one drive separate from nearly everything else?
Another question that I was unsure about with this setup was the swap area. It doesn't need to be on the same HDD as the running OS to be utilized, does it?
Also, any partition size adjustment recommendations.
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Jan 17, 2010
I downloaded Ubuntu about 5 months ago and love it.Problem is, I didn't know if I wanted to make it permanent on my computer, so I used the option which allowed me to download it as an application on my Windows Vista Control Panel.How can I increase the partition (I think I only have 9 GB left on my home folder) without loosing all of the preferences, applications, and hardware solutions that I have put on there?
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Feb 26, 2010
I recently made the move from windows to Linux and I am happy to having got rid off all the MS stuff. Trying out a few distros I decided on using Ubuntu and Mandriva (wife likes the flashier stuff, what can I say ).
My question is how can I partition my hard disk in such a way that my /home is separate from both the Ubuntu and Mandriva part but accessed by both as my default home folder.
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May 11, 2010
I would like to dual boot Ubuntu and Windows 7. I have Ubuntu 9.10 Live CD and Windows 7 Pro Live CD. Ubuntu is installed but Windows 7 isn`t. I have gparted installed. I found the following directions within Ubuntu documentation.
Master Boot Record backup and re-replacement
Back-up the existing MBR, install Windows, replace your backup overwriting the Windows boot code:
Create an NTFS partition for windows (using fdisk, GPartEd or whatever tool you are familiar with)
Backup the MBR e.g. dd if=/dev/sda of=/mbr.bin bs=446 count=1
Install windows
Boot into a LiveCD
Mount your root partition in the LiveCD
Restore the MBR e.g. dd if=/media/sda/mbr.bin of=/dev/sda bs=446 count=1
Restart and Ubuntu will boot
Setup grub to boot windows
I don't want to backup the MBR and restore as listed. I would rather use the Ubuntu Live CD to reinstall the GRUB.
How do I overwrite the MBR?
Do I use gparted and change the partition?
Do I create an NTFS partition as listed above?
Or what do I need to otherwise do to boot the Windows 7 Live CD so that it will install?
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May 29, 2010
I plan on installing Ubuntu 10.04 and it will be my first Ubuntu install. I plan on dual booting with windows 7 and I would like advice on partition sizes. I have a 250 GiB drive and my planned partitions are as follows.
Sda1 (PQSERVICE) 12GiB This was pre-installed should I delete it
Sda 2 (System Reserved) 100MiB This was also pre-installed should I delete it
I know one of the above is the windows recovery partition but I don't know which one
Sda 3 (Gateway) 25 GiB This will contain windows will 25 GiB be enough
Extended partition
Logical 1 10 GiB / the main Ubuntu partition 10 GiB should be enough
Logical 2 1 GiB /home this will just hold settings so 1 GiB will be enough right?
Both above partitions are ext3
Logical 3 3 GiB swap partition I have 1 gig ram upgradeable to two
Logical 4 180 Gib shared NTFS partition
I am new to Ubuntu and would like to know if you think this is proper. I have already defragmented the hard drive and will make the partitions in Gparted on Ubuntu live test from usb drive.
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Aug 28, 2010
on a dual boot can one change the size of each partitioned section of the boot once both sides are installed ?i have a 500GB disc and i have lucid on 307 Gb and maverick on 145GB i did this so i could test mavericknow i would like to change the split to say half and halfcan i do this?i have mountmanager installed but i am not sure how to proceed
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