Hey, i already have Windows XP installed and running on my computer, but i'm interested in setting up ubuntu as a second booting system. I was wondering before i actually go through with it, when i dual-boot linux and run it, then decide to go back to windows will i still have all of my data on windows like my Zune music/video/pictures as well as other programs, or will everything be erased? thanks
You shouldn't have problems, Ubuntu is friendly to existing Windows installs, just make sure you are installing Ubuntu to an empty partition, as it will want to format the partition it is installed to (so DON'T tell it to install to what is your Windows C:\...). BUT that said, you should ALWAYS back up your data before doing anything permanent, or be prepared to accept the consequences. Who knows, you might even want to get rid of Windows and transfer the data across! Also remember you can always use the Ubuntu disc as a live CD, you can run from the disc without doing anything permanent to the hard drive if you want to have an experimentation with no risk of damage.
There is another fun thing you could do... three partitions: hda1 Windows hda2 Linux hdb1 ntfs, mnt point media/hda2 as a shared data drive, including all Email from thunderbird and bookmarks from firefox, My documents folder, et al do it through linking and shortcuts
Hazel: you neglected to mention you have a 2nd hdd & is how you got a 3rd partition gibbey: All harddrives & partitions will automatically be mounted on booting into linux once it's installed,ubuntu is at v7.10 if you did'nt already know,you'll need to create two partitions after drive C, one for the linux distro which is EXT3,then another smaller for the swap which can be from whatever size you want as it seems to work ok for me,i've set mine to 800mb,it does'nt matter if you stuff up the install & you can't boot just reinstall it all will be fine once you get the install right & windows will be ok,the only thing you need to decide is where to put the grub either overwrite the boot-ini or put the grub into linux's partition,if you decide to put the grub into windows make sure you make a boot rewrite recovery disk
Yes, I have two HDD, but that is not the only way to make three, or even more partitions. first...Set up windows with three or more partitions in the setup options on one or two HDDs. next...I formatted the third partition as ntfs so the permissions for links would function, and so it will show up on the partitioner and you can define its mount point. Much easier than mounting it later. third...Use the manual partitioner in ubuntu 7.1 to control the process and use the last partition for Linux. Select this partition on the menu, use the auto feature, if you want, to allow the partitioner to 'auto configure' this partition again as swap and ext3. Set it as B (active boot).
