Can anyone help a beginner?

[spaceball]

I am a moderately able computer user, but can easily get out of my depth. Any advice would be gratefully received.

I have two hard discs installed on my computer. The original one is an 80 gig drive running windows XP. I installled a 500 gig one and put Ubuntu (Kosmic Koala) on it to see how it went. I was interested in finding out about using a linux system, mainly for using open source software, and creating music.

I soon discovered that I could see and use files (mp3s and other common formats) on the Windows drive whilst using Ubuntu, but not the other way around. I tried to rectify this by setting up a swap partition on the 500 gig disc.

This was not as elegant a solution as I expected it to be. I have now decided to take another approach, basically I want to have windows on the 500 gig drive (so the rest of the family can use some of the extra space, and I can store my mp3s and “common”files there anyway, and have them visible in Ubuntu), and Ubuntu on the 80 gig drive.

Here is my plan of action (please tell me if there are any flaws in it)

1.Reformat the 500 gig drive to NTFS. (If possible have it back to one partition)
2.Copy the contents of the 80 gig drive onto it.
3.Shut the computer down.
4.Physically swap the two drives around (if I am right, then the 500 gig drive will then become my C drive)
5.Use fixmbr on the windows boot disc to remove GRUB.
6.Start the computer (it should now boot from the 500 gig drive?)
7.Install Ubuntu on the 80 gig drive (I may wait until the Lucid Lynx)

Will it work? Or will I be putting my system in grave danger?

[yancek]

Why don't you just create another ntfs partition on the 500GB disk if you feel that you need more room for windows? I'm not familiar with any xp partition tools but you should be able to do it from Ubuntu. There really isn't any need to reinstall both! I don't understand how you thought a swap partition would resolve anything?

[redbook]

I am a moderately able computer user, but can easily get out of my depth. Any advice would be gratefully received.

I have two hard discs installed on my computer. The original one is an 80 gig drive running windows XP. I installled a 500 gig one and put Ubuntu (Kosmic Koala) on it to see how it went. I was interested in finding out about using a linux system, mainly for using open source software, and creating music.

I soon discovered that I could see and use files (mp3s and other common formats) on the Windows drive whilst using Ubuntu, but not the other way around. I tried to rectify this by setting up a swap partition on the 500 gig disc.

This was not as elegant a solution as I expected it to be. I have now decided to take another approach, basically I want to have windows on the 500 gig drive (so the rest of the family can use some of the extra space, and I can store my mp3s and “common”files there anyway, and have them visible in Ubuntu), and Ubuntu on the 80 gig drive.

Here is my plan of action (please tell me if there are any flaws in it)

1.Reformat the 500 gig drive to NTFS. (If possible have it back to one partition)
2.Copy the contents of the 80 gig drive onto it.
3.Shut the computer down.
4.Physically swap the two drives around (if I am right, then the 500 gig drive will then become my C drive)
5.Use fixmbr on the windows boot disc to remove GRUB.
6.Start the computer (it should now boot from the 500 gig drive?)
7.Install Ubuntu on the 80 gig drive (I may wait until the Lucid Lynx)

Will it work? Or will I be putting my system in grave danger?

Simple answer " NO DON'T DO IT"

If you want to move windows to your larger drive you will need a program such as ghost or clonezilla to achieve it.

Partition you 500 gb to 100 GB for windows, Maybe 50 gb for ubuntu and the remainder as an ntfs "storage" area.

Use the 80 gb as a backup drive.

Just my opinion, Others may think differently.

[spaceball]

Thanks guys I really appreciate the input:

Yancek: I wasn't (aren't) exactly sure what a swap drive was (is), but I read another forum article where this guy seemed to suggest that he had solved the problem about seeing ubuntu drive files in windows by using a program called "Ext2 IFS" so i tied it and ended up with a swap drive. I have now formatted that for windows. i suppose that I have no problem now... But i just don't like having partitions all over the place and thought 2 drives 2 systems was a more logical solution.

Redbook: Not sure what an ntfs storage area is? Would that be accessible by both systems?

[reed9]

By NTFS storage area, I believe he just means create a partition on the 500 GB drive, format it to NTFS, and then both Windows and Linux can easily read/write to that partition.

Linux can read NTFS, but Windows has trouble reading Linux partitions. (I don't know why, it's not like the source code isn't available to them if they wanted to implement something. )

[devils casper]

Hi spaceball !

I have same set of Hard disks. 80GB disk has around 5 partitions + Ubuntu OS and 500GB disk has Windows OS + partitions for Data Sharing.

I would suggest you to post the partition structure of your Hard disks here. We could help you better after checking that.

Boot up Ubuntu and execute this in Terminal

sudo fdisk -l

Post output here.

* Its small L in fdisk -l.

[spaceball]

Thanks again

Reed9: thanks for the definition. I think that i am starting to get a bit of a grip on what this partitioning caper is about now, even if I'm not sure how to do it.

Devils Casper: I did what you asked and got this:

Disk /dev/sda: 80.0 GB, 80000000000 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 9726 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0xa35fa35f

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 1 9725 78116031 7 HPFS/NTFS

Disk /dev/sdb: 500.1 GB, 500107862016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 60801 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x47db0bf3

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdb1 1 60053 482375691 83 Linux
/dev/sdb2 60054 60801 6008310 7 HPFS/NTFS

Disk /dev/sdc: 500.1 GB, 500107862016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 60801 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x0007bb4a

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdc1 1 60802 488385560 7 HPFS/NTFS

I think that there are three drives here. i failed to mention that I have an external 500gig used for windows. This shows up last on the list.

I think that Ubuntu has had problems mounting the smaller partition on the internal 500gig drive. But At the moment I see this as something that may be fixed without having to swap drives and operating systems around like I initially thought. To be honest, I don't think that I have got my head around just how much 500gigs actually is.

Anyway. the fact that Ubunto seems to have problems mounting the partition is annoying me "One or more of the mounts listed in /etc/tstab cannot be mounted".. this led to my planning drastic measures yesterday. My questions are: Can I make Ubuntu mount the partition? If I can do that, can I make the partition bigger? Or can I clear the partition and have an unpartitioned 500 gig linux drive back?

Thanks for your time

Spaceball

[devils casper]

Partition structure of your Hard disks is not good, imho. 10-15GB space is enough for Linux but you have assigned 400GB+ disk space to single Ubuntu partition.

Back up data from /dev/sdb1 and sdb2 partitions to any partition of 80GB or 500.1GB Hard disk. Delete both partitions and create 2 new partitions for Ubuntu and few more for Data sharing between Linux and Windows OSes.


/dev/sda1, 2 and 3 - 100GB each, NTFS
/dev/sda4 - Extended Partition.
/dev/sda5 - 100 GB, NTFS
/dev/sda6 - 1GB, SWAP
/dev/sda7 - rest of space for Ubuntu, ext4


You can shrink /dev/sda7 to create new partition, install any other Linux distro and setup multi-boot anytime.

My questions are: Can I make Ubuntu mount the partition? If I can do that, can I make the partition bigger?

Its really easy to mount partitions manually. Check which partitions have been mounted already.

df -h

[spaceball]

Devils Casper: thanks for your time. I am beginning to understand the concept of partitions a little bit better. I am definitely thinking of going with something like the plan you outlined but I would still like a couple more clarifications if you don't mind.

1) you suggest that I have /dev/sda1, 2, 3 and 5 as 100 gig partitions NTFS. Would this be one for music, one for photos etc, or what? Why not just leave one 400 gig partition of NTFS? and put 4 folders in it? (i'm sure that there is a good reason, but I can't think of it). Would it be for safety from a virus that could only take out one partition at a time?

2) Not sure what the extended partition is at /dev/sda4. What size should it be? Wouldn't I need to know that so that i would know how big /dev/sda7 could be (and what is the "ext4" at the end of the /dev/sda7 sentence?

Once again, I really appreciate your time and effort.

Spaceball

[yancek]

I'll leave it to devils casper to explain the why of the different partitions.

There is a limit of four primary partitions and if you want/need more than four, you will need to create an extended partition which can contain additional logical partitions. Extended partitions are basically a container and hold no data. Logical partitions can hold operating systems or just data. The size of the extended would likely be any remaining space on the hard drive so you can use that space to create logical partitions for your data.

The ext4 is the type of filesystem. Linux uses different ones, ext4 is fairly new, I believe ext3 is the most used. Windows has been using ntfs filesystem since NT4.0, w2k.