partitioning the harddisk / getting ready for her

So next came the question: how can I operate 2 operating systems? Googled and read and found and enlisted the help of the great Ubuntu-nl forums (forum.ubuntu-nl.org). Apparently there are very helpfull and skilled linux-users around who spend free time answering questions of noobs like me. Beat this Windows Support!

I chose to partition my harddisk using GParted. Get it here. You have to burn this on a CD too (hey, another LiveCD!). Possibly with the help of Isorecorder again.

Then you have to boot up with the GParted liveCD. I didn’t back up my system because there was nothing to loose anyway. Apparently you better defragment and backup before you start toying with partitions on your harddisk if necessary…

So my objectives were:
- keep windows
- possibility to share files between windows and ubuntu
- run ubuntu

When installing Windows it had apparently made 3 partitions for itself, so GParted’s analysis told me. hda1, hda2 and hda3. hda1 and hda2 had several Gb’s of stuff on them so I assumed one of them to be the C:\ drive ACER (and the other the backup? – I still don’t know today) and hda3 the empty D or ACERDATA drive. Surprisingly all windows partitions were installed with fat32 (instead of the expected NFTS), I also don’t know why.

My friends on the forum gave me this advice:

delete hd3 and make it extended (I first resized hda1+2 a bit to free up some space, I gave them 10 Gb each).

once this was done you do the following with the extended part:

create a new partition for the sharing of files between win and ubuntu (logical, fat32) I gave this about 20 Gb.

create a new partition for running Ubuntu on and booting Ubuntu from (logical, EXT3). 10Gb suffices.

create a new partition for your files under Ubuntu (your /home) (logical, EXT3). This got the leftover Gb’s.

create a new partition for the necessary linux-swap. Apparently it’s a good idea to put it at the end of your harddrive. Advice for size was the same size as the DDR-memory + 200 Mb or 150% of your DDR-memory. In my case of 1Gb DDR2 I made it about 1500 Mb. (logical, Linux-swap)

Time spend reading up on and tinkering with this: about 2 hours…