problem with partitioning
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The other day I was looking for a suggestion for rearranging partitions so I could dual boot my desktop machine. One person suggested I boot from Ubuntu’s LiveCD and use the partition editor included there, so I looked into that possibility last night and remembered a problem I have with that drive.
The reason my primary partition is 7.94 gigabytes is because there are a few bad sectors located at the 7.95gigabyte mark. When I tried to include that area and make my primary partition an even 8 gigs, Windows XP saw the bad sectors on my C: drive and refused to install.
What I actually have is:
Primary Partition (C:) - 7.94GB
Unused (unusable) space - 100MB
Extended Partition - ~72GB (split into 5 logical partitions)
My problem at this point is that 100MB area of bad sectors. Do I:
A) expand my primary partition to include it (assuming I can do so without losing all the data on my c: drive) and run ScanDisk to see if they can be repaired,
B) leave well enough alone, combine the logical partitions so that I end up with two partitions and a “dead zone” between them, then install Ubuntu after those two partitions, or
C) leave everything the way it is and just steal a few gigs from the end of the extended partition to install Ubuntu?
Option A would allow me to consolidate all my Windoze stuff into one partition and it would consolidate free space to allow the maximum amount of space for Ubuntu. It would, however, change all my drive letters and pretty much foul up every program that’s installed.
Option B still consolidates most of my free space and allows for a good sized Linux partition, but still changes drive letters and gives all my programs reason to complain.
Option C would be the easiest if it works, but it also leaves me the smallest possible amount of space for Ubuntu - something on the order of 2GB, I think - but it doesn’t require me to go through and fix all my other programs.
Given the need to work with what’s available and not just buy another drive, what would you do?
Technorati Tags: ubuntu, linux, windows+xp, install, dual+boot, partition, hard+drive
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