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[Tom <question78671@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Question #78671 on Ubuntu changed:
https://answers.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+question/78671

    Status: Open => Answered

Tom proposed the following answer:
Hey, don't worry.

The first time is always tough.  There's a lot of new stuff to learn
about and all the complexity happens before you've had a chance to just
use and settle in to linux.  In Windows this is all sorted out by teams
of experts with years of experience.  In linux you install yourself with
no prior experience (first time).  Next time you'll find it easy,
especially because this time has been unusually tough :)

Note that this message "Partition table entries are not in disk order"
always appears there even if the partition numbers do happen to be in
the order they appear on the disk, which is very rare & unlikely by the
way.

To get the most out of this system i would "bite the bullet" and just
delete partitions sda6, sda5, sda3 and sda4 to start again.  You could
do this by resizing but that takes ages and given the current size of
sda5 probably wont give you a fully normal Ubuntu at the end of the
process.  To delete the partitions first right-click on each one and
choose "Swap Off" or "umount", then it will allow you to delete.  Note
this is best done in the reverse order to the order they are placed on
the drive although it doesn't usually make much difference - it only
gets cranky about that sometimes.

Assuming your Windows isn't Vista then i would probably resize sda2
(your Windows partition (which Windows calls the "C: 'drive'")) to be
much larger.  If it's Vista then don't touch it in case it freaks out!
Then i would set out the partitions like this

sda1 unchanged
sda2 mostly unchanged, see above
sda3 Primary Partition 2.5Gb, 'file-system' = linux-swap
sda4 Extended Partition to fill the remaining drive space.  Note it is hollow
 . sda5 Logical Partition 08Gb, file-system = ext3, this will be /
 . sda6 Logical Partition 25Gb, file-system = ext3, this will be /home 
 . sda7 Logical Partition 15Gb, file-system = ext3 or fat32, this will be for fun

Note that sda7 is for perhaps for trying out Windows7 but mostly for
installing other linux distros and trying them out when you're not busy
in Ubuntu ;)  I have a couple of partitions at the end of my drive for
this sort of thing.  Also it can be quite handy for installing something
like Ubuntu 9.10-alpha for alpha testing or as a sandbox type area for
other things. 15Gb is perhaps too generous.  I would normally make sda6
about 15Gb or perhaps even less and just make sda7 a different size so
that it's easy to tell them apart from each other.  It's important for
me to have sda5 quite stable and always usable so sda7 is good for
experimenting :)  Extended partitions are a bit like a bucket, quite
handy for containing a few extra partitions than your hard-drive would
otherwise allow (thanks to microsquish).  I suggested making the swap
slightly larger than the maximum size you'll need because then you wont
have that to worry about if you get some more ram for this machine and
with Windows on this machine that's often something worth planning for
because Windows is really greedy for ram and isn't able to use it as
efficiently as linux does.  The swap needs to be larger than ram size in
case you use hibernate/sleep/suspend mode but usually over 2xRam is
unnecessary as it doesn't bring any benefit above that amount.

Ok, this time when you install Ubuntu and get to the "Partitioning
Section" (about halfway through the install) choose the bottom of the 3
options, "Manual Partitioning".  This is where you edit sda5 to set it's
"Mount Point" to "/" and edit sda6 to set it's "Mount Point" to "/home".
Note that in the column "Format?" only sda3, sda5, sda6 and maybe sda7
are ticked.  Make sure sda1 and sda2 are UNticked!  Formatting a
partition wipes all the data so it's crucial not to wipe Windows nor the
recovery partition.

Ok, that should do it but please feel free to ask for more (or less detail) or suggest a different layout.  Linux gives freedom of choice and there are a huge number of different good ways of laying this out.  Ultimately there's only 1 'perfect' way and that's your own ;)
Good luck and regards from
Tom :)

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