[Bartender]

Please don't charge into a dual-boot project without backing up your important Windows data and inventorying your CD collection. I've seen too many posts from angry people who ruined their Windows partitions. It shouldn't happen, especially if you have some good directions, but it does.
I did not set up partitions beforehand. Did it all with the Ubuntu CD during the install process. Ubuntu knew to build a swap partition so I didn't have to mess with that. I had good directions that had worked for lots of people right next to me.
Also, if you have a known-good Linux CD, run it live first (by that I mean the OS will run from the CD without making any changes to your hard drive) and see if everything appears to work OK. It'll be slow, but you can try going online, etc. and see what happens.

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If you are going to dual boot now or would like the option in the future or just want better data security make yourself a separate data partition most of my HDD is dedicated to the data partition with a windows of half the size then a smaller still linux partition but i added linux later and i took space from windows because its easy to install and all my data, videos music etc has been totally safe on its seperate partition. With the extra partition it really just gives you the safety net of if you mess up windows its fine just reinstall it and put your apps back on from disk or the data partition and a fresh install isnt always a bad thing.

[warriorscot]

If you are going to dual boot now or would like the option in the future or just want better data security make yourself a separate data partition most of my HDD is dedicated to the data partition with a windows of half the size then a smaller still linux partition but i added linux later and i took space from windows because its easy to install and all my data, videos music etc has been totally safe on its seperate partition. With the extra partition it really just gives you the safety net of if you mess up windows its fine just reinstall it and put your apps back on from disk or the data partition and a fresh install isnt always a bad thing.

[Bartender]

warriorscot -
How did you make your partitions? Scary subject. I've heard people say use gparted, others say it sucks. What procedure do you use to chop up a purely Windows machine, and have you had good luck so far with it?

[warriorscot]

I used partition magic, Gparted works but i prefer partion magic because its a little more robust than GPrated i feel. However Gparted worked fine i wasnt to bothered if it messed up the partition for windows anyway ive got a seperate data partition and alot of that backed up, a fresh isntall of windows isnt hard or that bad a thing and i was planning to run a linux/vista box so was almost hoping to trash the XP partition but its fine it was really easy. Grub just comes up on boot and lets me select my OS, i can easily modify it to change whatever the default OS is windows or ubuntu in seconds.

I wouldnt worry its pretty easy, easier if you have allready taken the prudent step of a seperate data partition but if you havent thats something to think about once you have all the data you need to keep backed up.

[warriorscot]

I used partition magic, Gparted works but i prefer partion magic because its a little more robust than GPrated i feel. However Gparted worked fine i wasnt to bothered if it messed up the partition for windows anyway ive got a seperate data partition and alot of that backed up, a fresh isntall of windows isnt hard or that bad a thing and i was planning to run a linux/vista box so was almost hoping to trash the XP partition but its fine it was really easy. Grub just comes up on boot and lets me select my OS, i can easily modify it to change whatever the default OS is windows or ubuntu in seconds.

I wouldnt worry its pretty easy, easier if you have allready taken the prudent step of a seperate data partition but if you havent thats something to think about once you have all the data you need to keep backed up.

All in all i must have partitioned this hard drive with windows still on a half dozen times and messed with the other partitions even more.