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I want to install Ubuntu to my wife’s computer (NC10), but do not want to get rid of XP (dual boot). I want to repartition the hard drive so that partition :C (with XP) is smaller and partition D is removed (currently both are ~77 gb). This would allow me more room to allocate to Ubuntu without removing the XP OS. I’ve read that it is possible to repartition the drive with Samsung Recovery Solution. First thing it said to do was to backup everything to DVD. There’s a lot of pics, etc on the drive and would need several DVDs to backup. Is it possible to only backup XP or is it “all or none”? If it’s the latter, can I use an external harddrive to backup and restore everything instead of the DVDs? This would be quite a bit more convenient for me. Thanks in advance.
Welcome to the forum bloodbath,
You can mirror your HDD to an external drive, this thread might help.
There are other mirroring softwares available too.
You don’t say how much space on each of your current partitions is used. I dual boot Vista and Ubuntu on my laptop an find that I really don’t need a large partition for Ubuntu. This is because Ubuntu will quite happily read/write data to a Windows NTFS partition, meaning that you can use a shared partition for Windows/Ubuntu data.
With this is mind, you should be able to install Ubuntu quite happily on a 10GB partition – 20GB woud be generous.
Assuming you have, say, 20GB of free space on your D: drive, I would shrink D: to around 57GB and install Ubuntu in the 20GB this would make available. I find the best way to do this is to use Easeus Partition Manager (free, at http://www.partition-tool.com/).
This would leave your C: drive and XP unaffected, give you 57GB of shared storage for XP or Ubuntu and 20GB of unallocated space for your Ubuntu installation. Ubuntu will install the grub boot manager, giving you the option to boot into the OS of your choice.
Shrinking the C: partition instead of D: is also a possibility, if you prefer. You don’t actually need 77GB for XP unless you have also installed a shedload of applications or are storing data on the same drive (it would be a better idea to store data on D:). Even if it’s currently empty, I can’t see any particular benefit in removing the D: partition entirely. It would be better to move your photos and other data to D:.
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