Ubuntu

Dual boot partition woes

Asked by jcoates

I only have one hard disk, (dell dimension 3000) and dell have already partitioned it twice, ie, there are 3 partitions. One for dell utilities and one for dell backup or sumthing. I am running a live dvd of ubuntu at the moment, and love it, so want to install to dual boot, I currently run win XP. When i run GNOME partition editor, there is a padlock by all the partitions. How can I create the new partition for ubuntu root, and don't you need another 'transfer' partition or something? would i have to buy a new hard drive? I am planning to buy a laptop, and in that case can't have 2 disks, so need to know about dual booting with one HD for future... all help would be appreciated! thanks.

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Cesare Tirabassi (norsetto) said : 		#1

Perhaps you can find some helpful info here:

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=179902&highlight=dualboot

Dual boot on 1 hd is no problem at all, provided you have enough space of course. There is no need to have a "transfer" partition. Just resize the WinXP one and in the new space create the ext3 partition and a small one for the swap.

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Cesare Tirabassi (norsetto) said : 		#2

There is also a nice video from Alan "Bless you" Pope that shows all the steps in detail:

http://screencasts.ubuntu.com/Installing_Ubuntu_with_Windows_Dual-Boot

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jcoates (jcoatz) said : 		#3

the problem is, my HD appears to be locked somehow, theres a little padlock by it in the partition editor, and most of the options are disabled...and so i can't resize it... how do i unlock it?! if i run the installer the options are use the entire disk, use the largest continuous free space, and manual... i dont want to risk my windows stuff, programs documents etc. so i thought i'd check on here first!

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Benoit Malet (benoit-malet) said : 		#4

Hello !

I know very well of this quite annoying problem. The padlocks are there because the partitions are mounted (i.e. "in use"). You can open a terminal and type this :

umount /dev/hd* (or umount /dev/sd* if your HD is SATA)

Then refresh the view in Gparted (partition editor) and the padlocks should have been gone ;)

(you have to quite hurry to work on the partitions, because Ubuntu will try to auto remount them ...

Hope this helps !

Regards,
Benoît

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Cesare Tirabassi (norsetto) said : 		#5

It is always a good precaution to back up your important data of course. Mind you, using the partitioning tool from the Live CD or during the install process has more or less the same benefits and the same drawbacks.
And, it could help a little bit if you defrag the disk before.
Manual partitioning during install is not at all difficult, if you follow the video from Alan you will see that its not a big deal. If you stumble against something which you are not sure, abort (you can abort anytime and in any case you will be asked a final time before you commit your choices), make a note and ask for support here.

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