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Monday 06th of February 2012

Partitioning your disks

Ubuntu linux installation step 5 screenshot

Single boot - Ubuntu only

If you do not intend to keep your copy of Windows installed on the computer, and you have made a backup of all of your important files, choose the Erase entire disk option from the Prepare disk space screen and then press Forward. The installer will automatically partition your hard disk in a suitable manner.

You're probably used to how Windows represents disks. Your first hard drive partition is usually the C: drive. However, Windows can change drive letters; Linux doesn't.

Devices are named differently too:
  • The first Master IDE hard disk is called hda.
  • SCSI, SATA and USB are referred to as sd.
  • Each primary partition is numbered 1 to 4.
  • Each logical partition is numbered from 5 upwards.
Hence the first logical partition on the master IDE drive will be hda5.

Partitioning does not occur until you finalize the installation, so you can decide to abort the installation at the very last minute if you require. After finalizing the installation, however, the hard disk will be re-partitioned and all existing data stored on it will be lost. Ensure that you have made and tested a backup copy of all important data.

For more complicated partitioning requirements, select Manually edit partition table from the Prepare disk space screen, and then press Forward. This will start a partitioning tool which you can use to partition your disk yourself. If you are unfamiliar with partitioning, please seek support through an Ubuntu support channel for advice on partitioning your hard disk safely and correctly.

Dual booting Windows and Ubuntu

You must choose the Manually edit partition table option. There are a couple of extra steps involved partitioning for dual boot.

  1. Resizing existing the Windows partition.
  2. Creating the swap partition.
  3. Creating the root partition.
  4. Creating a seperate home partition.

After you've selected the Manually edit partition table option, you'll see the Partition Editor screen. Partitioning does not occur until you finalize the installation, so you can decide to abort the installation at the very last minute if you require. After finalizing the installation, however, the hard disk will be re-partitioned and all existing data stored on it will be lost. Ensure that you have made and tested a backup copy of all important data.

Ubuntu linux installation step 5 screenshot


Resizing

At the moment your hard drive space is all allocated to Windows. This space needs to be reduced to create space for Ubuntu. You don't need a huge amount of space for Ubuntu. You will need enough space for the following:
  1. Root partition - where Ubuntu is installed. This should be at least 4GB.
  2. Home partition - where your files are kept.
  3. Swap partition - this need only be twice the size of your memory.
A hard disk can only have 4 primary partitions. However you can create a logical partition instead. This allows another 2 extended partitions to be created within it.
 

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