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

shawlli · Aug 19, 2011

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

Bare Foot Kid · Aug 19, 2011

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

shawlli · Aug 19, 2011

Bare Foot Kid said:
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!

Bare Foot Kid · Aug 19, 2011

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

shawlli · Aug 19, 2011

Bare Foot Kid said:
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!

Bare Foot Kid · Aug 19, 2011

shawlli said:
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

theog · Aug 19, 2011

Information

We always assume you have made your Recovery Disks using the OEM manufacturer's app the first day you had your new PC.
& made the Startup Repair CD

.

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

Lenovo Recovery
Lenovo Support - Home (US)

MaxPayne · Aug 19, 2011

shawlli said:
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

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.

Sent from my HTC Wildfire S using Tapatalk

Irony · Aug 19, 2011

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.

shawlli · Aug 19, 2011

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?

MilesAhead · Aug 19, 2011

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!

When you put Linux on a separate HD it's a good idea to create a swap partition. These are more efficient than Windows pagefile.sys since it doesn't go through a file system. It just indexes into the partition and writes blocks when it swaps out data.

Also I would take a look at Mandriva One CD if you have broadband via a network card on that machine. The installer is far superior. The basic system is on the CD but any other packages you want you select with the package tool. It downloads the packages. When you boot you come up in an X window manager with all the packages installed. All you have to do is log in. Ubuntu got all this buzz but Mandriva(which when I used it was called Mandrake) is very easy to set up, configure, and modify. Plus the built in disk paritioning set up in the installer is better than Ubuntu(at least as of when I tried Ubuntu maybe a year ago.)

It's a free ISO download. Way betterer.

pparks1 · Aug 20, 2011

Don't start with Linux by dual booting. Run it as a virtual machine and make sure that it suits you and it's something that you like before you commit real resources to it. Seriously, I haven't had a need to dual boot in quite some time. It runs great as a virtual machine...and well enough that most people discover that Linux really isn't their cup of tea anyway.

shawlli · Aug 21, 2011

Thank you everyone for all the helpful information! I did finally end up dual-booting Ubuntu and Win7, so now all is well! (I used Partition Wizard to pre-partition three logical drives out of my 'unallocated space' -- one ext3 for ubuntu, one for linux swap, and one NTFS for storage. Installed it all from a liveboot USB, and that was that! Wasn't all that hard in hindsight

)

pparks1 said:
Don't start with Linux by dual booting. Run it as a virtual machine and make sure that it suits you and it's something that you like before you commit real resources to it. Seriously, I haven't had a need to dual boot in quite some time. It runs great as a virtual machine...and well enough that most people discover that Linux really isn't their cup of tea anyway.

I'm dual-booting because I want to force myself to learn Linux, but I want to still preserve Windows just as a back-up (as peace of mind for if I 'break' Ubuntu somewhere along the line!) -- one day I'd eventually like to remove Windows altogether though! It isn't my cup of tea just yet... but I figure if i persist for long enough, I can forcibly make it my cup of tea! Heh.

Bare Foot Kid · Aug 21, 2011

Thanks for the update, I posted something to consider at your other thread also.

MilesAhead · Aug 21, 2011

Wasn't all that hard in hindsight )

Yeah, the Linux installers have come a long way. What made it easier was PCI winning the bus wars. When I first did Slackware you pretty much just had scripts that got you to a console login prompt. And even for that you had to fill in a bunch of stuff about your video hardware, type of mouse etc..

edit: when I say "fill in a bunch of stuff" I mean you had to find out the horiz and vert sync rates of your monitor and other stuff about your video card. It wasn't even easy to get the Mouse to work right sometimes if it wasn't standard MS mouse.

There was so much varied hardware around. Just on system bus you had ISA, EISA, Microchannel, Vesa bus, and others I can't remember. Finally PCI came in and simplified things.

If you wanted XWindows you had to download the software and read a book on configuring it. Now you fill in your preferences and it comes up on the first boot.

Still, when you get into the Linux nitty gritty it helps to know something about the scripts in /etc and subdirectories. The little XWindow applets just call the scripts. They are still there.

Good to know some bash shell scripting.

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