Blank 750GB Drive - Want To Install 2 OS's

jArgHA

I have an unformatted 750GB drive that I want to use as my new single drive in my machine. I would like to install both Ubuntu & Windows XP. Have installed Windows XP many times, but never installed Ubuntu before.

Machine is 3GHz Intel Core Duo with 2GB RAM.

I was wondering if someone could recommend partition sizes, and filesystems to use for the drive. I was thinking something along the lines of
20GB NTFS partition for Windows XP
20GB partition for Ubuntu (what filesystem is used here - EXT2/3?)
4GB Swap partition for Ubuntu (what filesystem is used for this?)

If I want the remaining disk space (600+GB) to be accessible to both Windows & Linux, does one have to use the FAT filesystem? My concern with using FAT is that it can only handle files up to 2GB in size and I have some images which are 6GB+ that I need to be able to copy here.

Could I use NTFS and mount this from Ubuntu?

Any tips would be appreciated,

jAH

bman

jArgHA wrote: »

I was wondering if someone could recommend partition sizes, and filesystems to use for the drive. I was thinking something along the lines of
20GB NTFS partition for Windows XP
20GB partition for Ubuntu (what filesystem is used here - EXT2/3?)
4GB Swap partition for Ubuntu (what filesystem is used for this?)

Those partition sizes seem fine. Depends on your own situation. Do you think you'll be installing a lot of software or will your machine be for storing loads of data (films, music, etc.)?

/ partition = ext3 (or whichever ubuntu defaults to)
swap has its own filesystem type. You won't need to worry about this. You'll have no choice.

I'd also suggest you create a small /home partition as well as your / partition. Or even something like a 15GB / and 5GB /home if you don't wanna give more than 20GB overall to Linux. This is so that if you decide at a later date to upgrade your Linux distro you can still leave your /home folder in tact (and therefore lots of your Linux settings).

jArgHA wrote: »

If I want the remaining disk space (600+GB) to be accessible to both Windows & Linux, does one have to use the FAT filesystem? My concern with using FAT is that it can only handle files up to 2GB in size and I have some images which are 6GB+ that I need to be able to copy here.

Could I use NTFS and mount this from Ubuntu?

With ntfs-3g you can now read and write to NTFS from Linux (Ubuntu probably has this installed by default but I don't use Ubuntu so couldn't be sure). So that's probably the easiest option.

jArgHA

thanks for the tips bman. ntfs-3g looks like the handiest way of accessing data from the NTFS common partition alright.

jArgHA

ok I somehow b0rked up my unpartitioned space during my dual boot install and was wondering if anyone has any tips on solving the following:

1. I first installed Windows XP, in a 20GB NTFS Partition (Primary Partition)
2. I then created an extra 40GB NTFS Partition in Windows XP (Primary Partition)
3. I then booted the Ubuntu Live 7.10 CD and went through the graphical install:
- Created 4GB Swap Partition (Primary Partition)
- Created 20GB / EXT3 Partition (Primary Partition)

I know now I should probably not have used Primary partitions for all the above (eg. for 2 I could have created a Extended Partition).

After doing the above I found that in the Windows Disk Management I was unable to create any new partition (of any type) in the 600GB+ of unallocated space.

I then booted up the Ubuntu Live CD and launched GParted Partition Editor. After trying to create a new partition in the unallocated space I was told "It is not possible to create more than 4 primary partitions".

Fair enough I thought - so I deleted partition number 2 above, and then changed it to an Extended partition. I then tried creating a new partition in the unallocated space again, but the same message appeared (see image attached for screenshot from GParted).

Does anyone know what's going on here? Even after changing partition #2 above to an Extended partition (which should mean that there are 3 primary partitions on the drive), I seem unable to create any partition in this large chunk of unallocated space.

jAH

edit: image in following post

jArgHA

image attached

KAGY

jArgHA wrote: »

Does anyone know what's going on here? Even after changing partition #2 above to an Extended partition (which should mean that there are 3 primary partitions on the drive), I seem unable to create any partition in this large chunk of unallocated space.
post

An extended partition _is_ a primary partition. The difference is that is can contain other logical partitions. So you need to incorporate your partition 2 with the rest of the space and further subdivide that up.

I'm no expert so maybe somebody else can suggest sizes and what partitions can be logical

ressem

If you want the extended partition to include the last 600 GB, then it has to be created with this size. So in your case you will need to delete the swap and ext3 you have already created, create the extended volume to 600 GB, and create the partitions at the position currently marked as unallocated.

Usually you'd put the extended 600 GB partition as the last partition.
I don't know your particular requirements, but 20 GB is cutting it close for an XP system partition. I'd treble it.

Also there is an installer for windows which allows read/write access to ext2/3 linux partitions, if you are unconcerned about any security/reliability issues this might create.

http://www.fs-driver.org/