Windows 7 - Attempting to dual boot Win7 and Ubuntu11.04 - partitioning issue

Hello!

Background

I recently purchased an x220 Thinkpad by Lenovo and I've been trying to set up a dual boot partition between Windows 7 (which my system came with) and Ubuntu 11.04.

In the end I want to have three main partitions on my hard drive: one running Windows 7 with a total capacity of ~40-45GB, one running Ubuntu with ~10GB, and a third data partition called "Storage" with ~50GB to which both the Windows partition and the Ubuntu partition will have access. I found this set-up outlined on this site. Do those partition sizes sound OK?

I will eventually install Ubuntu onto a separate drive using Wubi, so as to keep my Windows boot loader safe from Ubuntu's GRUB boot loader!


Issue

Currently, I have one main partition (C drive) which has 55.39GB of space, 29.81GB of which is free space (you can see in the screen cap). There are also two smaller recovery partitions and the rest is 52.91GB of free space (which I will eventually turn into the data partition called Storage). Right now I'm trying to split the C drive so that 45GB can go towards a Windows7 partition and 10GB can be used for a Ubuntu partition.

When I try to do so using Window's Disk Manager (by right-clicking the C drive and selecting 'shrink volume'), a window pops up that tells me I only have 89MB of 'shrink space' even though it says I have 29.81GB of free space within my C drive on the disk manager window.

How can I go about splitting my C drive without causing any problems? I looks like I can force-shrink 10000MB and then turn that into the new partition, but will that have any adverse effects on my C drive?


Thanks for reading up till this point! I apologize if my post is unnecessarily long -- I am a 'computer illiterate' so I still don't have an eye for what's obvious vs. what's necessary to include in a post, lol

-shawli

Hello shawlli, welcome to Seven Forums!


The "Free Space" is actually an Extended partition and is not free space at all; you can create as many Logical drives within the Extended partition as there are available drive letters; have a look at this tutorial linked below starting at Method One #2 for some ideas and be sure to post back with any further questions you may have and to keep us informed.

Partition / Extended : Logical Drives

Here's additional information you may find useful.

How to Dual Boot Windows 7 and Ubuntu

Thank you! I will read these now, but just a quick question first -- you're suggesting that I make my linux partition (do you think I need 10GB is too much for ubuntu? Maybe I'll use 5GB...) by splitting and using the extended partition called "Free Space". That seems simple enough...

But I was just wondering if there was any way to shrink my C drive any further? It has almost 30GB of free space (but only 89MB of "shrink space"? :s) which I don't plan on using up much, and I was hoping to build my linux partition out of that!

You may be able to use the installed version of Partition Wizard to do that, one word of advice though, do not shrink the Windows 7 partition much smaller than 50GB or so as that will cause serious issues as Windows 'grows' over time and that will be very difficult to overcome at a later time.

Partition Wizard Free Home Edition

Ah, I might consider leaving it alone then.

Thank you for your quick responses!

That would be the wise thing to do; you're welcome!


I would suggest you create an image of the entire Hard Disk Drive and store that externally so when Grub messes up the Windows 7 installation you have a path back to this state you're at now, have a look at this tutorial linked below.

Imaging with free Macrium

You can Order Lenovo Recovery Disks from here:
Lenovo Support - Home (US)

Lenovo Recovery
Lenovo Support - Home (US)

The reason why it won't let u shrink any further is because you have some ummovable files on your hard disk and they are usually at the end to prevent u from shrinking your windows partition. The workaround is for you to defragment and "optimize" your hard disk. That will move those unmmovable files to the beginning of the hard disk thus allowing you to shrink your hard disk space. To do this I recommend the program "smart defrag 2" which is free and choose the option "defrag and optimize". I recommened doing it at least twice. Good luck.

Ubuntu may need quite a bit of space also. As I recall, when I installed ubuntu (ver 8 and 9) it took more than 5 gigs on the hard drive itself.

Thanks to everybody for your quick responses!

In the end I tried to partition my unallocated space through the Ubuntu installation liveboot. I gave about 15GB to Ubuntu as an "extended partition", and left the rest of the unallocated space alone so I could turn it into its own NTFS drive called "Storage" through Windows 7 afterwards. This turned out to be a big mistake, because I'd reached my cap of four primary and extended drives without being able to use that portion of the unallocated space. I'm not sure what to do now, it seems I have unnecessarily partitioned my hard drive...

This is what things look like now (in thumb nail below).

I'm not exactly sure what I've done to my hard drive now. Can someone tell me what the possible implications of having that Free Space and the Unallocated Space there?