Re: [orca-list] The Partitioner In The Latest Version of Ubuntu

[Daniel Dalton <d dalton iinet net au>]

On Tue, 20 May 2008, EARL ZWICKER wrote:

> instructions would be greatly appreciated.  I see check boxes by each drive,
> and I think I also see check boxes by each partition, but I'm not exactly
> sure, so more help would be great.  How can I actually size the partitions,

Well, a drive contains partitions eg. sda, sdb.
You could have sda1 sda2 sdb1 sdb2 etc.
So first, you want to work out where linux should go, do you just have one 
internal hard drive?
if so linux will go on sda.
Are you dual booting?
If so then linux should also go on a partition after the first os.
If you aren't dual booting linux will probably go to sda1.

Here is what I do:
1. Fire up the livecd and use gparted to resize my partition, (usually 
windows sadly).
2. Once resized and my changes are applied, I reboot into the installer in 
the usual way.
3. Since I have resized and now there is continuous free space after the 
win partition, I tell the installer to creat its partitions on that free 
space.
The option is called 'install to largest continuous free space' or 
something like that.
2 partitions will be created, maybe 3 actually:
linux: your whole linux installation
swap: when linux runs out of ram
extended: so you can have more than 4 partitions, swap is in the extended 
partition.
Its a little more complicated than that actually, for more details, try a 
google search.

If you are like me and want different partitions for different things like 
/home so it is easy to do reinstalls and stuff, and share between the 
distros I am dual booting, you can do that, but please do a bit of 
research.

> and how can I make sure not to lose the partition that already has data on
> it?

Well, back it up? Make sure you do that, because there are no garantees.
But once backed up, just be sure to read everything the installer says, 
including the final over view before writing to disk, and basically, don't 
delete or format your existing partitions: if your data exists on sda1 and 
the over view says sda2 and sda4 and sda5 will be formatted then that is 
fine.
If it says sda1 will be deleted or formatted then go back and make sure 
you fix it.
(Of course if sda1 contains your data)

--
Daniel Dalton

http://members.iinet.net.au/~ddalton/
<d dalton iinet net au>