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[Tom <question77500@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Question #77500 on Ubuntu changed:
https://answers.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+question/77500

Tom proposed the following answer:
Hi

I noticed from "fdisk" that your drive seems to start at cylinder 63 -
"/dev/sda1 * 63", apart from that it's looking good.  With linux it's
easier to keep your data&settings separate from the main part of the OS
& all the programs so having the 2 separate partitions is an advantage.
We keep all the data&settings in one main folder called "/home", with
sub-folders such as "/home/username/Pictures".  Typically these folders
get used even by Kodak cameras rather than setting up some obscure
folder hidden away somewhere as happens in Windows.  We can help you
take advantage of having /home on a separate partition with almost no
extra fuss :)

When you are running Ubuntu from the Cd having chosen the option "Try
Ubuntu without changes to this machine" we call that a "LiveCd session".

It would be a good plan to use the "Places" menu on the top taskbar to
backup your data from your Windows partitions (Windows calls partitions
"drives" even though they are just parts of the 1 physical drive in your
system).  To backup the data simply copy it all to an external drive or
burn onto cd/dvds.  Then open a terminal console to type in more
commands, just as you did with the "fdsik -l" command but this time type

free -m

this should show how large your ram is.  It will also show how large the
"Linux swap / Solaris" partition is and it would be helpful if you could
let us know those values. Then go up to the top taskbar and click on

System - Administration - Partition Editor

Please let us know if there is another partition in front of sda1 and
how large it is, also let us know how large sdasda6 & sda7 are.  Also
let us know if sda1 is completely full, if it is then don't follow any
more advice in this post until after we can clear some space on that
Windows "C: "drive"".  Assuming there's enough free-space right-click on
sda1 and resize it so that the start of the partition leaves 100Mb + (2
x Ram) of empty space at the 'beginning' of the physical drive.  If you
took the space off the end of the partition and then moved the partition
along then click the "Undo" arrow button and make sure the whole
operation is going to get done in just 1 step, otherwise it can take
ages especially on such a large hard-drive :)  Now click on "Apply",
this really will take quite a long time, plenty of time to make a cup of
coffee, or possibly even have lunch!

The next steps are much faster :) Right-click at the beginning of the
grey space and create a new 100Mb partition at the very start of the
hard-drive, this needs to be a Primary, ext3 partition (this will be the
"/boot" partition).  After it make another partition, this one filling
the rest of the empty space - it needs to be larger than the size of
your ram, about twice ram (on such a large disk) is about perfect.  this
new partition should also be a Primary Partition but should be a "file-
system" we call "linux-swap" rather than another "ext3".  At this point
when you click on the "Apply" button it should complete both operations
quite quickly.

At this point it would be good if you could do the "sudo fdisk -l"
command again and let us see the results of that this time :) Just to
check that it's all going ok.

Now assuming that sda6 is over 5Gb you can do a really good install, roughly along the lines of
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/WindowsDualBoot
but crucially when you get to the partitioning section about halfway through choose the bottom option of the 3 to do "Manual Partitioning".  It will re-scan the drive and then show exactly how you have already laid out the drive but it has different colour-coding to gparted.  Right click and "Edit" the tiny 100Mb partition at the beginning of the hard-drive to set it's "Mount Point" to "/boot", it's ok to reformat this partiton.  Next "Edit" sda5 (the larger of the 2 pre-existing partitions) to set it's "Mount Point" to "/home" and finally edit sda6 to set it's "Mount Point" to "/" (also called "Root" as it is the start of the linux file-structure), again it's ok to reformat both of these 2 partitions.  The crucial one to make sure is UNticked in the "Format?" column is sda1, probably the 3rd partition along by now - because that is the one that Windows calls your "C: drive" so reformatting it would be really bad.  

After this install completes you should be able to happily reboot into
eithe Windows or Ubuntu.  The menu will hopefully have a few more
options such as one for Ubunu called "recovery mode" which has some
handy menu items in a disturbingly blue screen - typically it's worth
running through most of these tasks about once a month before choosing
"Resume normal boot" which is the default option on that menu.  There
are a couple of things to do to tidy that menu but we can help with that
later.

Good luck with all this!
Feel free to ask for more (or less) detail about any of this!
Good luck and regards from
Tom :)

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