Unable to create partition for installing Ubuntu

Question

I want to do a dual boot on my laptop which was shipped with Windows Vista.

I do not want to do a fresh install hence I attempted to do a shrink partition on my main partition to free up space.

It is a 120 GB hard disk, and already there are partitions as follows:
100 GB - C - OS (53.5 GB free)
Remaining - D - Recovery

I did a Computer -> Manage -> Disk Management
Selected the C: drive and did a 'Shrink Volume'.

It gave me following:
Total size before shrink in MB: 102129
Size of available shrink space in MB: 12536
Enter amount in MB: 10000 ( I set it to 10 GB)
Total size after shrink in MB: 92129

I said shrink, and it says there is no available space on disk(s).

How should I proceed? There is free space as shown in explorer and also, I asked it to shrink by an amount lesser than it recommended.

PS: Should I be posting this in some other forum section?

kevinf311 · Answer

What level of Vista is installed on your laptop?

With versions of Vista that have the Bit-Locker option enabled changing the partitions may prove difficult. If Bit-Locker is enabled, you would need to disable it and then try to shrink the partition.

I wasn't too clear on how you were planning on setting up your partition table. Was it Vista that you were trying to make 10GB? If so, you will need to leave more than that for Vista. The base operating system takes up around 11GB (if I recall correctly). Base Office is around 500MB, then add in additional drivers, games, and other software. I would recommend leaving no less than 25GB for Vista.

If I have this backwards and you were trying to allocate 10GB for Ubuntu, then that is fine. 10GB is plenty for the Ubuntu Operating System, any additional software you would need and some media.

For resizing partitions I usually use either the partition editor in the Ubuntu installation or the program gparted that is on the same Ubuntu Live CD that is used for installation.

So, in summary:
Try to determine if Bit-Locker is enabled and if so, disable it.
Defragment your hard drive (windows tends to spread out over a hard drive)
Set up a partition table that has no less than 25GB for Vista.
Try using gparted as the partition editor.
The partition table I like to use for dual booting windows on my desktop is:
[--windows-ntfs-25%--][-----/home-ext3-59%-----][-Linux (/)-ext3-15%-][swap]

Given that you have the Dell recovery partition on there as well, the above table may not work (because of limitations on primary partitions. You could swap the Linux root ( /) and /home partitions and make /home an extended, or you could have everything integrated into the one Ubuntu partition. The advantage of a separate /home partition is that your documents, pictures, music, settings, etc are separate from the core OS files. I use my /home partition to store all of my music, video, and documents for both Operating Systems.

I hope that this was helpful and not just an overload if useless information. I'll be checking back on the thread :)

Vyoma · Answer

Kevin, thanks for the extensive reply. :)

I am using Windows Vista Home Premium.

There are two partitions on my HD:
C: 100 GB (64 GB Free) - OS
D: 10 GB (6 GB Free) - Recovery

I want to shrink the C: partition and take out another 10 - 20 GB. And install Ubuntu in that new partition.

The BitLocker you mentioned - how do I check if it is enabled? I searched the control panel of Vista and I was unable to find it.

Thanks again. :)

jacob 01 · Answer

if vista or any other windows os wasnt so prone to viruses id say delete the restor partition

kevinf311 · Answer

Upon further research on BitLocker, it would seem that unless you turned it on, it is off (the default setting). Here is the Bitlocker site: http://www.bitlocker.com/

Given that, I can only recommend that you defragment the Vista partition and then go in to the partition editor on the Ubuntu Live CD (gparted) to create your new partition using ext3 as the file system (anything in the range you posted will be fine). Also create a partition for swap (file system will be linux swap) that is about 1 to 2 times the size of your RAM (I always just use 1GB since it isn't used often).

After the partitions are created, go through the Install process on the Live CD and choose to install the OS to the newly created 10-20GB partition with the smaller partition labeled as swap.

[-Recovery-10GB-][----Windows-80GB----][--Linux-19GB--][swap]

^^ There's a possible partition table that you could use.

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Unable to create partition for installing Ubuntu

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