Dual boot and a boot partition?

Biscuiteer

Biscuiteer

Biscuiteer

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Got my new computer up and running and am about to stick ubuntu on it. I've got one 320Gb HD connected to it (at the moment) and intend to use this drive to dual boot Vista and Ubuntu.

Vista's got stuck in the treacle of the postal system so Ubuntu's going on first. The vista installation should be fairly small as windows games, personal files and media will be installed on a separate drives. The partition for Vista will contain the OS itself, utilities and office/graphics software. I'm coming from using XP which always looked cute and small upon installation but expanded to fill all available space thereafter! How big should the vista partition be?

I was going to give Vista 50-80Gb at the start of the drive and give ubuntu the rest of the disc which would be...

10-20Gb \
4 Gb \swap (have 4Gb RAM)
rest of free space for \home

on either 4 primary partitions or 2 primaries (vista and \ ) and swap and home on extended/logical ones)

do these sizes sound about right? I'd like to get it right first time as I've never quite trusted partition fiddling programs.

What I'm really confused about though is the mention of dedicated boot partitions in various guides but can't establish whether these are really necessary for someone wanting just a dual boot desktop for home use which will be Vista and only one linux distro at a time... Do I really need one and do I need to place it at the very start of the hard drive. From what I understand it's a only a dedicated home for the kernel (which would otherwise live happily in root), no longer needs to be placed at the start of the drive on a modern computer and is irrelevant to any Windows OS on the disc. Is this correct?

thanks,
B
 
Put vista on 1st, doesn't matter where you put the partition, then install ubuntu to automatically use all the remaining free space.

This will make the boot loader configuration about 1,000 times easier.
 
BigglesPiP said:
Put vista on 1st, doesn't matter where you put the partition, then install ubuntu to automatically use all the remaining free space.

This will make the boot loader configuration about 1,000 times easier.
Click to expand...
I second this motion. Vista will not see your Ubuntu partition and will simply overwrite your bootloader. Ubuntu will see your Vista partition and will set itself up so as to boot both. If you really must install Vista second you should use the Super Grub Disk to automagically restore the Grub bootloader so you have a choice again.
 
Thanks for your replies - looks like it might end up being the Super Grub option as I can't see Vista arriving before the beginning of January... and then I'll have to apply for the 64 bit disc (bought retail vista) and wait for that to arrive too. I'll think that I'll install Ubuntu in the meantime, set the partitions up - leaving a space for Vista - and have a play with it. I will read about the Super Grub Disc in the meantime and if I don't understand it shall end up installing ubuntu again after vista's gone on.

but no dedicated boot partition required though

thanks,
B
 
Biscuiteer said:
but no dedicated boot partition required though
Click to expand...

I use a separate /boot partition (25MB).

I do it because grub is nether LVM, or XFS aware.

It's 25MB because I have an EEE-PC, and this can just about fit 2 kernels.

There are other resons for a seperate /boot partition. I seperate everything (/ /home /tmp /var /usr).
 
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