Hi, I've recently bought a Compaq laptop. It currently has Windows 7 installed and I want to dual boot with Ubuntu.
Unfortunately, Compaq have already partitioned the hard disk into four partitions. The largest partition, which is 480GB is the second. If I begin the installer, and resize the second partition to create free space, then I'm told that it is "unuseable". I believe that the extra partitions are for recovery etc.
So what can I do? Is there a way of getting Ubuntu installed without disturbing the contents of the partitions already setup?
Thanks in advance Richard
Richard.
The problem is that there can only be a maximum of four primary partitions on a disk, and your laptop ships with all four of them already in use. Simply resizing one of the existing partitions won't help, because you won't be permitted to create a fifth primary partition in the freed up space.
The easiest option is to just delete the two recovery partitions (you should already have made some recovery DVDs from Windows, before doing anything at all). That will allow you to resize the Windows partition and create a new one for Linux. This approach means that if you ever need to restore Windows on your laptop from scratch, you will be wholly reliant on the recovery DVDs you made.
The more complicated option is to backup the two existing recovery partitions to files, and make a note of their partition information. Then you can delete them both and create a new extended partition in their place. This extended partition can contain multiple logical partitions with it - so you can recreate the recovery partitions from the files you backed them up to, within the new extended partition. This approach will allow you to then create a new additional Linux partition, either as a primary partition or within the extended partition. If you ever need to reinstall Windows again, this way you will have the choice of rebuilding the laptop from either the recovery partitions on the disk or from the recovery DVDs you made instead.
When I bought my HP laptop last year, I used GParted Live [http://gparted.sourceforge.net/livecd.php] implement an extended partition. The recovery partitions were fairly small in relation to the total size of the disk so I figured it wouldn't hurt to leave them intact.
Peter.