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I have just bought a new PC having Windows 7 installed, it has 500 GB disk space. Attached is the screen shot of the disk management enter image description here

  1. C:-Installed Windows 97.5 GB
  2. D:- Kept required data 195.31 GB
  3. G:- isautomatically made and says system reserved 100 MB
  4. Rest is unallocated 172.79 GB

Target: I want to have dual-boot system: Windows 7 and Ubuntu 12.04 on my machine.

Problem detail: Trying to install Ubuntu 12.04 desktop edition from USB, but facing issues while assigning the partition.

  • I created the primary, EXT4, partition of of size = Free space - 8 GB
  • I wanted to utilize this 8 GB for swap size, but i cannot see the space remaining anywhere

I do not know how to provide space for swap at this point..

I am stuck at this point and not able to move forward. Can someone guide how to proceed and create paritition successfully

FYI: I donot want to go with WUBI as it just creates 32 GB. and i might face issues later for expanding the disk. Please advice.

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1 Answer 1

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For a normal MBR partition table the maximum number of primary partitions is 4. What you need to do is make the unallocated space an extended partition and you will be able to put two partitions inside that - one for swap and one ext4 formatted partition for Ubuntu.

You can boot off the Ubuntu LiveCD/USB and use Gparted to create these partitions.

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is there any simpler way to achieve this task, for non linux person, it seems a risky option :) –  RDX Jan 6 '13 at 9:33
If you leave the space unallocated, there's a good chance just the "install alongside" option will do exactly the same thing. I do advise that you have all your important data backed up. This is standard advice whenever doing anything with partitions or installing new operating systems. –  fabricator4 Jan 6 '13 at 10:55
i finally did the same thing. but now i have 100 gb in windows and around 375 GB in ubuntu. i think now i need to shrink this partition.. –  RDX Jan 6 '13 at 12:25
Mmm, then you'll need to boot off the LiveDVD and resize the partitions with gparted. Windows always was 'about' 100GB - I think it's stolen some space from your 'D:' drive. Doing an install manually is normally the best way to make sure that other partitions don't get messed around with. At least you'll be able to see what the drive was kind of supposed to look like with the extended partition etc. –  fabricator4 Jan 6 '13 at 12:34
You'll have to resize and move the secondary partitions inside the extended partition first, then you will be able to shrink the extended partition and increase the size of the NTFS partition that you are using as 'D:' back to what it was before. Oh yes, and don't forget to action the changes before you exit Gparted otherwise it won't actually write any changes to the drive. –  fabricator4 Jan 6 '13 at 12:36

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