[gamefreak94]

Kay, so this is the third time I've tried and failed at successfully installing another OS along-side XP in dual-boot even thought millions of other people successfully manage to do so!

Here's the overall layout of my 2 HDDs:

(One mistake in the pic is that the C drive isn't the system drive, but rather the M drive is. This happened after an Acronis restoration froze half-way through and messed up everything)

See the small 10.77 GB primary partition at the end of the first HDD? That's the partition which I deleted to makes way for installing Ubuntu. So I deleted it, and was left with 10.77 GB of free space. Out of this, I made an Ext 3 partition of 9 GB with a "/" mounting point, and intended for the rest to be made into the swap partition, but once I create this 9 GB partition, the remaining 2.5 GB space becomes "unusable" and I can't create my swap partition :???:

Anyone have any idea what's going wrong here?

Thanks in advance.

 

[BobTheGoldfish]

I've never done more than four partitions on a single disk before, so I don't know if you have reached some arbitrary limitation. If you have enough RAM though, you don't actually need a swap partition at least.

 

[Squall-Leonhart]

iirc... and im probably wrong... you can only have 4 [strike]logical[/strike] Basic partitions per drive, if you want more you have to use a Dynamic partition.

 

[tuanming]

Get yourself another harddrive you cheapcake! Problem solved.

 

[S.T.A.R.S.]

Lol.I have never seen so MANY partitions on one single hard disk drive.And each one is not so big even.This what you are doing doesn't make sense lol.I have only ONE partition which uses my entire HDD.I would recommend you the following:
-Backup ALL your important data
-with DOS program called Kill Disk format your "ENTIRE" hard disk drive
-Create ONE partition that uses the entire HDD and install your favorite
version of Windows on it

I mean...what's the point of so MANY partitions lol???Each one is not even big enough to play games on it if you INCLUDE putting save games during the time you play the game:dead:(This is just an example lol)...
Having so many partitions can make your computer to run even slower,especially if you don't have enough RAM...
Just do what I told you and life is going to be much easier:thumb:
And if you want to have 2 Windows operating systems installed,2 partitions is enough lol.Not so many...........
By the way...why do you need so many partitions on one SINGLE hard disk drive?????????????

 

[koko]

GF, You haven't reinstall your os and make 2 partitions ?, btw, Linux doesn't work on NTFS. Reinstall the os and make 2 partitions first.

 

[Spyhop]

What possible reason do you have to have that many partitions?

 

[V1ncent]

I think he believes deleting files to be over-rated, and formats his partitions instead.

 

[Fadingz]

DO IT!


anyhoo,
I hate partitioning my HDD, you can actually get less out of the whole.

I have a 750GB 7,000rmp storage drive and 2x 150GB(300 total) RAID 0 OS/program/active files drive so that I don't need to deal with all the crap that can possible come out of partitioning HDD's.

 

[Squall-Leonhart]

GF, You haven't reinstall your os and make 2 partitions ?, btw, Linux doesn't work on NTFS. Reinstall the os and make 2 partitions first.

Future. Get to it.

 

[gamefreak94]

Hehe my dad made them all, with what intention, I'm not sure

iirc... and im probably wrong... you can only have 4 [strike]logical[/strike] Basic partitions per drive, if you want more you have to use a Dynamic partition.

You can't have more then 4 primary partitions per drive according to what ppl at ubuntu forums said. But my HDD only has 3, so why can't I format one and use its free space for Linux? :???:

Lol.I have never seen so MANY partitions on one single hard disk drive.And each one is not so big even.This what you are doing doesn't make sense lol.I have only ONE partition which uses my entire HDD.I would recommend you the following:
-Backup ALL your important data
-with DOS program called Kill Disk format your "ENTIRE" hard disk drive
-Create ONE partition that uses the entire HDD and install your favorite
version of Windows on it

I mean...what's the point of so MANY partitions lol???Each one is not even big enough to play games on it if you INCLUDE putting save games during the time you play the game:dead:(This is just an example lol)...
Having so many partitions can make your computer to run even slower,especially if you don't have enough RAM...
Just do what I told you and life is going to be much easier:thumb:
And if you want to have 2 Windows operating systems installed,2 partitions is enough lol.Not so many...........
By the way...why do you need so many partitions on one SINGLE hard disk drive?????????????

Okay, that's going a bit too far in the opposite direction now :lol: So what if a virus gets into that one partition? I'm supposed to format the whole 250 GB thing? oO

@BobTheGoldFish (how did you get the idea of your name btw? :lol I know Linux can run swimmingly on 2 GB RAM without a swap partition, but installation can't continue unless you make one.

@Tuanming: Shut up

 

[Squall-Leonhart]

hmm

Partitioning Hard Drive(s)

he said 4 physical partitions....

 

[BobTheGoldfish]

@BobTheGoldFish (how did you get the idea of your name btw? :lol I know Linux can run swimmingly on 2 GB RAM without a swap partition, but installation can't continue unless you make one.

Long ago I worked the night shift at a Sonic Drive-In, a drive-in restaurant franchise that serves pretty decent food, at pretty decent prices, and at a fairly decent speed depending upon current customer volume. In alphabetical order, the first names of the night shift employees at the time were as follows:

Christine
Christopher
Christopher
Christopher
Christopher
Kristy
Krys
Crissy

We all actually went by our masculanized monosyllabic shortened names of 'Chris' in our normal day to day lives, so we all ened up having nicknames. I have no idea why they named me Bob, but it just stuck. In addition, although I am a much more spiritual person now, I have never been nor do I think I will ever be a Christian. Therefore I do not think the name my parents gave me 'Christopher Michael Early' is a very fitting one. That explains the Bob. Although I can't explain the goldfish part myself, Google was able to find me a suitible explanation that may or may not be far from what I was thinking those many years ago when I chose this moniker:

Two goldfish were swimming around their aquarium. One said to the other, “I’ve thought it over carefully, and weighed the evidence, and I’ve come to the conclusion that I’m going to be an atheist.” The second said, “Oh, really! Well, then, suppose you tell me who it is that changes the water in our aquarium every week!”
In the first two chapters of Romans Paul talks about three kinds of people who reject God. I’d like to take a look at the first of these three this morning. I called this individual “the barfly” in my sermon of a couple of weeks back. Max Lucado calls him the hedonist. But this morning I want to change his name. Not all the people of this type hang out in bars. Some are highly respectable! So, call this person “the goldfish.” And let’s take a look at goldfish religion.
The goldfish is the individual who thinks that the only thing that exists is what he or she can see. The goldfish shares this point of view with the barfly, and the goldfish may end up as a barfly. But not always.
The end of the goldfish’s world is the edge of the aquarium. There are puzzling shadows that the goldfish can see beyond the edge of the aquarium, but the goldfish can’t figure out what those shadows are. The goldfish has no evidence of the existence of anything beyond the edge of the aquarium, so, as far as the goldfish is concerned, there is nothing.

 

[Gossamer]

Ok damnit. I'm here.

First of all. Never... ever... ever... EVER..EVER install any Linux distrobution into dual-boot on one drive. Sure, people do it but it's far too risky.
Second of all, automatically selecting "install onto largest contiguous free space" means "FREE SPACE" NTFS isn't free space. ext2/3/4 isn't free space. Unpartitioned is free space so when you partition out a section for a Linux distrobution, don't format it. Let the Linux CD format it and make damn sure you have your numbers right.

HDD's in Sata::

x= Your first hard drive all the way to your last.
y= The partition number on each drive
(hdx,y)

(hd1,2) would mean your second hard drive, third partition. You count zero. Zero counts as one.
(hd0,0) would mean your first hard drive, first partition.

If your partition uses the SXX format then::

sda = first hdd
sdb = second
all the way down the alphabet

sda1= first hdd, first partition
sdb2= second hdd, second partition.

you get the point.
You've got two hard drives. Make the most of them.


BTW: If you make a partition out of a hard drive and unpartition it. During the ubuntu installation you will be able to select "install on largest contiguous free space"

Which means!::

The largest unpartitioned area. In that case, the only unpartitioned area would be what you partitioned and left unformated in windows therefore it will install there.

example::

500gb HDD

400gb_______________100gb
==================XXXXXXXX
ntfs_________________unpartitioned space

Selecting "install on largest contiguous free space" will install ubuntu, and setup the grub bootloader automatically for that area.

 

[gamefreak94]

I didn't select the "install on largest contiguous free space" option. This is exactly what I did:

1) Obviously I didn't want to format the whole HDD and loose all my data, lol, so I selected the manual option from the partition manager.

2) Then I deleted the 10.77 GB NTFS partition which you see at the end of the first HDD.

3) In its place, I created a 9 GB Ext3 partition to install Ubuntu onto and intended the remaining 2.77 GB to be the swap partition.

4) But my plans came to nothing, once I created the 9 GB Ext3 partition, the remaining 2.77 GB space became unusable and I couldn't make the swap partition.


Oh, and how can I install Linux on my second HDD and boot from it? Is it possible to boot from a slave drive? I don't want to change the master jumper on each HDD each time I wanna boot a different OS :lol:

hmm

Partitioning Hard Drive(s)

he said 4 physical partitions....

Hmm...yeah now you're onto something! There's 2 primary partitions + 1 extended partition + would be Ext 3 partition = 4. Meaning that the remaining space could not be used for swap area.

Yay! Problem found! Thanks Squall!

Long ago I worked the night shift at a Sonic Drive-In, a drive-in restaurant franchise that serves pretty decent food, at pretty decent prices, and at a fairly decent speed depending upon current customer volume. In alphabetical order, the first names of the night shift employees at the time were as follows:

Christine
Christopher
Christopher
Christopher
Christopher
Kristy
Krys
Crissy

We all actually went by our masculanized monosyllabic shortened names of 'Chris' in our normal day to day lives, so we all ened up having nicknames. I have no idea why they named me Bob, but it just stuck. In addition, although I am a much more spiritual person now, I have never been nor do I think I will ever be a Christian. Therefore I do not think the name my parents gave me 'Christopher Michael Early' is a very fitting one. That explains the Bob. Although I can't explain the goldfish part myself, Google was able to find me a suitible explanation that may or may not be far from what I was thinking those many years ago when I chose this moniker:

Two goldfish were swimming around their aquarium. One said to the other, “I’ve thought it over carefully, and weighed the evidence, and I’ve come to the conclusion that I’m going to be an atheist.” The second said, “Oh, really! Well, then, suppose you tell me who it is that changes the water in our aquarium every week!”
In the first two chapters of Romans Paul talks about three kinds of people who reject God. I’d like to take a look at the first of these three this morning. I called this individual “the barfly” in my sermon of a couple of weeks back. Max Lucado calls him the hedonist. But this morning I want to change his name. Not all the people of this type hang out in bars. Some are highly respectable! So, call this person “the goldfish.” And let’s take a look at goldfish religion.
The goldfish is the individual who thinks that the only thing that exists is what he or she can see. The goldfish shares this point of view with the barfly, and the goldfish may end up as a barfly. But not always.
The end of the goldfish’s world is the edge of the aquarium. There are puzzling shadows that the goldfish can see beyond the edge of the aquarium, but the goldfish can’t figure out what those shadows are. The goldfish has no evidence of the existence of anything beyond the edge of the aquarium, so, as far as the goldfish is concerned, there is nothing.

lol wow, that's quite a story XD

 

[S.T.A.R.S.]

Okay, that's going a bit too far in the opposite direction now :lol: So what if a virus gets into that one partition? I'm supposed to format the whole 250 GB thing? oO

Even if you have 2 partitions,many todays viruses automatically copy them selves to all possible partitions.Just make one partition that uses the ENTIRE HDD and then CLONE your entire HDD on some USB HDD.On that way virus CANNOT enter in that cloned USB HDD since it's not even plugged into the computer.This is how I did it and I NEVER had any problems all these years.:thumb:For cloning I used DriveClone Pro version 5.0

 

[@ruantec]

Hi gamefreak!!! what you need is EasyBSD. with this tool i´ve managed to successfully install 3 OS on my machine(Vista x64, OSX Leopard and Ubuntu linux) with EasyBSD you can create and manage your boot menu and so boot the desired OS anytime.

i recommend you to install your OS´s on different HDD´s and just boot from there. when you install those OS´s i also recommend you to disconnect the others to avoid possible mistakes and lose your precious data. so after you´re done just re-connect the HDD back again and boot XP(or vista) to configure your OS´s and boot menu using EasyBSD.

Greetz
@ruantec

 

[gamefreak94]

Thanks @r , EasyBSD would probably come in handy if when I come to configuring the boot-loader to make the OS'es co-operate with each other, but atm, I want to install Linux first. And I can't do that unless I have 2 or less physical partitions on my HDD, and right now I have 3

But if I install Linux on my slave HDD, will I have to change the boot priorities each time I wanna switch between it, and XP (which will be on my primary HDD)?

 

[@ruantec]

Thanks @r , EasyBSD would probably come in handy if when I come to configuring the boot-loader to make the OS'es co-operate with each other, but atm, I want to install Linux first. And I can't do that unless I have 2 or less physical partitions on my HDD, and right now I have 3

But if I install Linux on my slave HDD, will I have to change the boot priorities each time I wanna switch between it, and XP (which will be on my primary HDD)?

look you don´t have to change the boot priorities... all you have to do is set the boot priority to your XP partition which will contain the modified boot screen menu. the menu can be created using EasyBSD and so you can choose the OS to boot from the screen menu. so if you want to boot linux then just choose linux from the boot menu!!! that´s all! one more thing you can even install XP and Vista pararely too but it can be tricky sometimes.

anyways i recommend you to re-organize your HDD´s and use 1 HD for one OS.. EasyBSD supports multiple OS installed on one HDD but it can be tricky to make them work propertly. the only problem is that EasyBSD is a windows only app i think so XP/Vista have to be installed in order to configure your boot sectors.

 

[gamefreak94]

Hmm...I suppose I can format the 6.41 GB partition and install Linux in its place, then tweak around with EasyBSD so they can boot up easily. Sounds like juicy plan! Thanks for the input guys!