System restore With Windows and Ubuntu

Hi :)

It shows that a System Restore inside Windows should not affect the Ubuntu at all. Clearly you have installed Ubuntu properly as a dual-boot alongside Windows. Other ways of installing Ubuntu inside Windows, either with the Wubi or on a Virtual Machine would be unlikely to have "ntfs" partitions and almost certainly would not have the "de Dell Utility".

Another point is that it tests that you can use the LiveCd which boots into Ubuntu from the cd/dvd-drive NOT the hard-drive. So know you know you can access a working Ubuntu with all it's tools even if something does go a little wrong with the hard-drive install. This is probably the closest thing to an equivalent of the Sytem Restore for Ubuntu but it is far more powerful and gives us better options with more finesse. If anything ever goes wrong with booting Ubuntu from the hard-drive then LiveCd can almost certainly help you fix the problem or at least access data that is on the hard-drive.

If you do the System Restore in Windows and then can't boot into Ubuntu on the hard-drive then boot up a LiveCd session and this guide should help you fix the problem
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/WindowsDualBoot#Recovering%20GRUB%20after%20reinstalling%20Windows

The * on sda3 shows that is the boot partition and since it is an "ntfs" then that is probably what Windows calls your "C: 'drive'". As you can see it is not a full drive but only a part of one. Since sda2 is also an ntfs partition then Windows should see that as 'another drive', probably your "D: 'drive'". Windows tries to simplify things for it's users but it just ends up confusing everyone. If you are confused about different parts of a drive being called drives when they are really only parts then you are certainly not alone and can just thank MicroSquish for that. Outside of Windows-land we call the different parts "partitions".

"C: drive" = sda3
So you can see that Ubuntu uses a completely different reference system for talking about it's partitions. This is the same method used by the rest of the linux/unix world and that probably also includes Mac and other operating systems too.

So by plugging the start & end addresses into a spreadsheet we can calculate that the output from fdisk show us this

sda1 Dell Utility 30Mb
sda2 Windows 16Gb probably an old install of Win Xp, 98 or something
sda3 Windows 252Gb probably a re-install of Windows, Win7 or Xp perhaps

sda4 Is a special type of partition that can contain more normal partitions ...
 . sda5 Ubuntu 50Gb
 . sda6 Linux-Swap 2.2Gb Sometimes called "Virtual memory".

Ideally, swap should be about twice (2x) ram size but not much more than that. As long as it is slightly larger than ram then it's fine. Ram + Swap gives the total active memory. Windows keeps its Virtual Memory inside the same partition as everything else which allows it to get fragmented and slows the machine down after just a few months of using the Windows install. Keeping swap on a separate partition is one way that linux stays faster. Your machine probably has plenty of Ram so the swap probably only gets used if you use Suspend/Sleep/Hibernate modes which are useful but always worth avoiding.

Adding up those partition sizes gives us 350Gb hard-drive which is what it says at the beginning so we know that there are no mysteriously hidden 'empty' spaces.

So, it should be safe to do the Windows "System Restore". The Dell Utilities might have something to restore the entire drive back to factory setting wiping all your data but the "System Restore" inside Windows will only affect Windows. If there is a problem booting into Ubuntu afterwards then boot up LiveCd and use this guide to try to get things back to normal
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/WindowsDualBoot#Recovering%20GRUB%20after%20reinstalling%20Windows

Please let us know how this goes!

Good luck and regards from
Tom :)