Partitioning hard drive and installing Ubuntu?
 

I have never used Linux before but really want to get started. After trying Ubuntu's live CD i decided it was the one for me. The only problem is that i want to keep windows xp, so i will need to partition my hard drive, right? From what i can tell i already have 2 partitions, C and D, the C drive has 72.21 GB free space so that is the one i want to partition and to intsall Ubuntu on. I'v never partitioned before so i'm a bit stuck, i was going to use partition magic because i had heard good things about it, but it isn't available in my area. In the ubuntu documentation i have read that ubuntu includes a partitoning tool but it seems a bit complicated to me. Can any one point to a good tutorial or something that could help or maybe explain it for me, or maybe there is another program like partition magic i could use?

Thanks for your help

You have to create empty space on the drive--once you do that, Ubuntu installer will create the new partitions.
First, how big is your drive? How much data--eg what is in you D partition?

The approach that I recommend is to setup partitions for Windows and Linux + one FAT32 partition for data. This will be easily accessible by both Windows and Linux.

I am a bit fuzzy as to what tools are good for re-sizing NTFS partitions.

Be sure to back up any critical data before doing any of this.....

Overall i have 150 GB, C has a capacity of 146 GB and has 71.52 GB free space, D has a capacity of 3.24 GB and has 1.43 GB free space. The D partition is a Recovery Partition.

Hi Taae, before installing Ubuntu or any other distro you need to have an specific layout of the partitions, so you avoid future problems, I suggest you to consider the following layout:

- For Windows you need to keep the C partition and you have to re-size it, probably 30 GB is enough.
- As pixellany points out you can have a FAT32 partition for exchanging data (mp3,videos,etc), the size depends on the quantity of data you have, 60-70 GB could be a good size.
- You can burn in a DVD the data in the Recovery Partition D, and copy it to the partition created to exchange data. So you can safely delete this partition.
- The rest of the space you can use to install Ubuntu, the partitions that you can consider when installing Ubuntu are the following:
a swap partition (normally the twice of your RAM)
a root partition (you need about 10-15 GB)
a home partition (the rest of the space in your hard disk)

Once you have your layout defined, you can follow this procedure:

1. After copying to a DVD or 2 CDs the data of the D partition, delete it.
2. Resize the C partition, and create the partition to exchange data.
3. Copy all the media files and in general all your data from the C partition to the exchange data partition. You only need to have in the C partition the directories that belongs to Windows and other progams installed in your system. You'll free a lot of space in your C partition, you probably will end with less than 30 GBs used.
4. Resize again the C partition, so you finally have enough empty space for Ubuntu.
5. Install Ubuntu, first create a primary partition for swap, and then an extended partition (you can't have more than 4 primary partitions), in the extended partition create two logical partitions for root and home. Don't worry about this part, Ubuntu will let you do this.

As pixellany said, remember to back up your critical data.

How do i resize and the C partition?

Use Partition Magic or any other similar software.

Quote from my first post:

What other software is there?