Dual Booting - Your experiences and tips

Nulty

Hi folks, I am planning on dual booting my Toshiba Laptop Windows 7 with a Linux distribution. I haven't decided whhich dist to go with yet though I'm leaning towards Ubuntu because from what I can glean its the best for newbies to Linux. Looking for something to ease me into it.

I've got:

Intel® Core™ i3-330M Processor -
4 GB DDR3 RAM (1066MHz)
capacity : 320 GB drive rotation : 5,400 rpm Partitioned @ 148 GB

Anyone got top tips or caveats they'd like to share. I'm looking into it myself and found this which looks useful.

Any suggestions would be apprerciated.

Voodu Child

Make sure you've got a Windows reinstall disk and/or a repair disk. Also take a system image before you get started.

Kinetic^

Easiest way to go about it is to have Windows installed first.

Use gparted iso/usb to re-partition your hard drive.

Install linux on the new partition.

Dual boot will be available when the machine is powered on.


If you wanted to add another element, split your hdd in to 3 parts - windows, linux, data. Format the data partition to fat and both windows and linux will have access to it. Only limitations will be the 4gb file size limit on fat.

Dacelonid

In my experience it was as easy as install Windows, then install Ubuntu onto the same partition and make sure it resizes the partition.

One "issue" post install is that by default Ubuntu will be your new default OS, you will have to edit the grub.lst (iirc) to set it back to Windows if that is what you want.

PogMoThoin

You may come upon an issue I've come across. Hard drives can only have 4 primary partitions unless You do dynamic disk which is only recognised by Windows. Windows 7 will have 2, Your c drive and another 100MB system reserved partition. Your laptop will most likely have a recovery partition with Your backup of windows, they do this for piracy reasons instead of giving a copy on disk. Then you may already have a fourth data partition, some manufacturers divide the c drive to give a seperate partition for storage.
To check how many partitions Your hard drive has at present right click my computer and select manage, select storage and open disk management.

Nulty

Thanks for the replies.

Anyone suggest the best Linux dist to start off with? One that workss best as dual boot (if thats an issue?)

@ PogMoThoin
I'm not really sure what to do with the partition with the HDD Recovery files on it. Should I leae that in its own partition....1 partition Win7 - 1 partition Linux - 1 partition HDDRecovery?

Nulty

Kinetic^ wrote: »

Easiest way to go about it is to have Windows installed first.

Use gparted iso/usb to re-partition your hard drive.

Install linux on the new partition.

Dual boot will be available when the machine is powered on.


If you wanted to add another element, split your hdd in to 3 parts - windows, linux, data. Format the data partition to fat and both windows and linux will have access to it. Only limitations will be the 4gb file size limit on fat.

Isn't it possible to create WinRAR files of a really large file by breaking it up? There are ways around the 4gb restrictions aren't there?

PogMoThoin

Nulty wrote: »

Thanks for the replies.

Anyone suggest the best Linux dist to start off with? One that workss best as dual boot (if thats an issue?)

@ PogMoThoin
I'm not really sure what to do with the partition with the HDD Recovery files on it. Should I leae that in its own partition....1 partition Win7 - 1 partition Linux - 1 partition HDDRecovery?

Leave the recovery partition alone. Windows will have 2 partitions. It doesn't matter which order the partitions are Your bootloader will sort that, but You cannot have more than 4 partitions, if You got a 4th data partition on Your laptop You'll not be able to dual boot from that drive unless You remove one.

I'd advise you to start off with Ubuntu, main reason is the amount of information available for every piece of hardware that exists and also its a community who love to help windows converts

Nulty

I'll go with Ubuntu so, they'll be gentle I hope :P

The recovery partition is currently 148GB, It doesn't need to be that big does it? I could create a 40GB partition for that or does it need to be big because the recovery will be recovered in that particular partition?

Current Partitions
148GB = Windows
148GB = Recovery partition

How would you partition it if it were you?

calex71

Ah here if you you simply want to wet your feet and not go with the hassle of worrying about partitions etc google a program called wubi

It's essentially a windows installer for ubuntu. What it does is claims some existing hard drive space for itself and allows you to install ubuntu through windows and dual boot it, but without the need for any messing around.

It can be uninstalled through add / remove programs in windows and when you boot you get an OS selection screen.

The down side is you will take a performance hit but it's an ideal solution if you are new to it and just want to check it out.

The installer is very simple and n00b friendly, so much so even an idiot like me can use it

Edit : SOme reading here https://wiki.ubuntu.com/WubiGuide

Nulty

Top Wo/Man calex. Thanks a bunch!

U_Fig

ya i've used wubi previously does all the work for you..handy for beginners..you can install ubunutu using it and uninstall it just like you would any other program

ED E

Running Win7/Win7(DAW)/Ubuntu. Easy BCD is a nice little tool for fixing/changing your bootloader from within windows.

http://neosmart.net/dl.php?id=1

Have Ubuntu on an ext4(or whatever its called, my memory fails me at 5AM) 20GB partition and anything large is kept on the data partition that is NTFS but ubuntu can read/write. Cant access the that partition(20GB) from windows though.

TheReverend

Easiet way is to use wubi, I have it on my college laptop and its fine

Nulty

Bump -

I finally got around to it and I'm posting this from my fresh install of Ubuntu! Dual booting my computer and my first impressions are good!

I had a small issue with my wireless network card not having the Linux drivers but that was quickly fixed with the "jockey-gtk" command in the terminal. I just hope the drivers for windows still work when I boot that up.

ShooterSF

Congrats!

I know I'm late here but I would add to those that suggest a third data partition. So handy not letting windows see your ubuntu partition or vice-versa (well ubuntu will see the windows one but you don't need to go near it).

Also re: the 4 partitions. It's not exactly true. (Im open to correction here) You can have 4 "primary" partitions though one can be an "extended" one instead which can be partitioned multiple times (known as "logical" partitions).

The only thing is (at least for windows boot manager) a bootable OS had to be installed in one of your primary partitions and not a logical one.