Dual Booting Linux

[Tiders]

I shrunk my D: drive on my computer using the disk management tool and it created 80 gigs of "unallocated" disk space. I figured this meant that it was empty and I could install the ubuntu OS on it. I then proceeded to boot ubuntu from the disk and about half way through the install guide it asks me where I want to install it to. It says either on the whole disk drive or manually select a drive. I select manual and it does show the drive that I had just made by shrinking another... But it is called "unusuable" and when I try using it anyways it says that there is no system files for it. The drive also doesnt have a letter name.. Any suggestions on what I should try?

[OneOffDriveByPoster]

Not sure about Ubuntu, but try allocating a partition in the unallocated space. ext3 should be a reasonable file system.
You may also want to create a swap partition.

[Tiders]

OneOffDriveByPoster @ Tue Apr 21, 2009 10:25 am wrote:

Not sure about Ubuntu, but try allocating a partition in the unallocated space. ext3 should be a reasonable file system.
You may also want to create a swap partition.

How do I allocate it? Do I do this within disk management? The only options that I see are "Properties" and "Create new simple volume" simple volume tries to make it into a dynamic disk and it says my OS doesnt support that

[DemonWasp]

First point is that drives don't inherently have letter names. Linux handles drives as discrete devices based on how they're attached, so your disk is probably either sda or hda (SATA or PATA); the partitions are addressed by the number on the end, so the first partition would be sda1, the second would be sda2, etc.

Before following the instructions below, back up any important information on your Windows install. Put the data on a CD, USB key, whatever. I'm not responsible if you toast your system.

In the Ubuntu installer, when it brings up the partitioner, select "Manual". Then, it should give you a list of all the partitions on your drive. As near as I can tell, it looks a little like this: your single drive has two partitions. One of these (probably sda1) is NTFS and holds your windows partition. The other is "unallocated space".

1. Select your windows / NTFS partition. Click the Edit button. Make absolutely certain that the "format?" checkbox is NOT CHECKED. Select "Use as NTFS" and give it the mount point /windows. Click OK.

2. Select your unallocated space. Click the Create Partition button. Choose a size of about 2GB and select "Use as Swap". Click OK.

3. Select your unallocated space. Click on the Create Partition button. Choose to use all the remaining space (default). Select the ext3 or reiserfs file system and select the root ( / ) mount point. Click OK.

Triple-check that the partitioner is NOT planning to format your Windows partition. If it does, you WILL lose everything on that Windows install, including the Windows install and all the programs on it. Make absolutely sure.

Click Next and continue on your merry way. When your computer reboots, you should be presented with a menu that lets you choose which OS to load.

[Tiders]

The problem is that its saying the the empty space that I have is "unusable" and it wont let me create a new partition with it

[DemonWasp]

...how did you resize your partition? What disk management tool did you use and how did you do it?

[Tiders]

I resized it using the computer manager thing.. Thing I hate Disk Management.. Then I clicked on my D: drive and hit shrink disk and I shrunk it by 50% and it created an "unallocated" area of disk. Im assuming it should say "free space" when Im selecting wehre to install ubuntu but it says "Unusable space" and just to test something I tried installing ubuntu into every partition that I have... for all of them I get the error.. "No root file system is defined. Please correct this from the partitioning menu."

[Tiders]

Also... Any chance you could give me your MSN to talk about this faster?

[DemonWasp]

You can find my MSN name by just clicking on the pretty icon, but I'm not on MSN at the moment and won't be until maybe 10-11pm my time (EST).

For future reference, Ubuntu's partitioner is smart enough to resize your Windows partitions safely on its own.

How did you manage to use this useless Disk Manager thing to resize your existing partition? I see no "resize" controls at all, only "Format", which is exactly wrong.

[Tiders]

Well Disk Management thing gave me an option to "Shrink" my primary partition... Thats what I did and it created unallocated space.. Could you walk me through how I SHOULD be doing this? How do I create empty space to install this in?

[DemonWasp]

The simplest way is to have the partitioner resize your NTFS partition when you're installing Ubuntu. I haven't gone through an install in a while, so I couldn't tell you exactly how to do that off the top of my head.

Generally, I would use a special disk I have for precisely this purpose: I made a bootable CD of GParted, which gives you a nice GUI to handle everything in. It supports pretty well any operation you want on any filesystem you want, with a few exceptions (some filesystems don't resize well, but NTFS isn't one of them).

Window's own disk management utilities are awful. Is it possible to restore your partition scheme to what it was before (single partition on the hard disk) with Window's tools?

[Tiders]

Well I can expand my old partitions back together but I actually have 4 partitions on my computer when I bought it. A C:/ drive a D:/ drive and 2 other ones that dont have names. Should I put it back to the way it was?

[Tiders]

Okay even when I tried resizing my partitions from the Ubuntu partitioner it still gave me the "No root system files defined" message

Please dont bail on me dude I really need to get this working... Im sorry if Im being frustrating

[DemonWasp]

Yes, try to put it back the way it was using the Windows tool. If that succeeds, try with the Ubuntu instructions. Otherwise, wait until later this evening when I have a non-work computer to experiment with (I knew I had a use for that old 1.6Ghz machine!).

[Tiders]

So later tonight around 10 PM you can go on MSN and help me directly and you can even try it out yourself to test?