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yohbs
Asked: 2012-09-10 00:02:31 +0800 CST

Partitioning a hard drive before install

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I have a new ASUS laptop that I got from the university. The guys at the computing centre recieved it before me, erased the hard disk, and installed all their crappy software (Novel, outlook, and the like).

I tried to install Ubuntu with dual boot, but because they apparently did whatever it is they did wrong, and the installer does not recognize the existing windows installation and only suggests to install Ubuntu as a sole OS. None of the advices here or here helped. My final decision is to indeed let Ubuntu erase all existing windows stuff (and then use windows occasionally through VirtualBox).

However, when I try to do that it tells me that the partitioning looks like GPT but doesn't have the correct signatures, or something like this. It asks whether this is indeed a GPT HD, and I don't know what to tell it.

What I ask is: should I simply use gparted from the CD to repartition the HD? If so, what would be the recommended partitioning (I have 750GB), and the recommended filesystem (ext3? ext4?).

Update: here's a screen shot

enter image description here

Thanks in advance for any advice.

installation

4 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    Yes, indeed. Boot from the live cd, run gparted, select Device -> Create Partition Table... on the disk you want to install Ubuntu (I assume the laptop has one harddisk anyways). It will notify you that all data on that harddisk will be inaccessible after this process, if you are OK with this, confirm and continue.

    I would suggest doing partitioning on this step, as well. Prepare your partitions, then while installing select the partitions you already configured.

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  2. A complete description (size, type, ..) of the required and optional partitions for Ubuntu installation, is available here: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/DiskSpace

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    1. Boot your system using live-cd and install gparted if not already installed.
    2. sudo -i
    3. gparted
    4. resize sda3 to your needs.
    5. create extended partition
    6. create a new partition within the extended partition
    7. now start ubuntu installer

    I hope it helps.

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  4. If you're feeling a bit anxious about using the command line than the GParted live CD is a good option. Lets you partition/ format your hard drive using a GUI. There are also some other nice tools on the CD which help to diagnose hardware.

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