Disk partitions

[Liam Proven]

On Sun, Feb 13, 2011 at 9:48 PM, Jorge Gusmao <jorge.m.gusmao at gmail.com> wrote:
> Thanks for your help!
> As you are being so kind I feel I can tell the all story.
>
> I have an HP DV8 (windows 7 home) with the following disk configuration
> (disks.png)
> So I believe I cant simple shrink the C: OS because the maximum nº for
> primary partitions are 4, is this right?

That is correct, yes.

If you already have 4 partitions, you cannot create any more. You will
have to merge the contents of 2 of them and remove one, then you can
create an extended partition in which you can have many more.

> Question
> Could I do the following: (using aesus in windows)
> 1 - Shrink C: OS
> 2 - format the unlocated space creating an extended partition
> 3 - Create a / partition (whitch kind?)
> 4 - Create a swap partition (whitch kind?)
> 5 - Create a /home partition (whitch kind?)

Yes, that sounds right.

As for what kind - well, there's only 1 kind of swap. That is not a concern.

As for / and /home - well, I use ext3 as it's pretty tried and tested.
However, most modern distros favour ext4 which is newer and both
faster and more efficient on large volumes of hundreds to thousands of
gig in size.

> Last week I installed ubuntu 10.10 in work using wubi and I was very
> surprised with the results. So surprised that I decided to make a real dual
> boot.
> So I burned a live CD and let it install itself (along windows XP). He
> shrunk the windows partition and installed himself. Things ware looking
> good.
> On the first boot the grub showed and I chose ubuntu, everything went fine.
> Restart.
> On the next restart I chose windows and everything went fine. Restart.
> On the thirth time i got this: no such disk grub rescue.
> So I passed next few hours learning about supergrub disk and somehow I was
> able to get back to windows (very relived because this was at work)
> This appended two times.

Oh dear. That's worrying. It sounds a little like some kind of Windows
"autorepair" is happening, perhaps, and damaging things.

> Question:
> Is this a result of letting Ubuntu manage the partition in witch he
> installed it self?

No, that should be OK. But personally, I prefer to set the partitions
up manually, so that I know exactly what goes where.

> What I nedd is a tutorial (for newbies) about how to partition my disk and
> other to let me fix the grub.

Ububtu 10.x uses GRUB2 (well, actually, a late beta version, number
1.97-1.98) and this is both very complex, quite hard to customise and
largely devoid of good clear helpful instructions. I really do not
like GRUB2 myself.

> I know...noob  windows user... but im willing to learn.
> Thanks

:¬)

-- 
Liam Proven • Info & profile: http://www.google.com/profiles/lproven
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