Thinkpads Forum

hi I just have a little question about Ubuntu. I've played a little around with linux before, where I had a 1 week course with CentOS.

And now I'm gonna install Ubuntu after christmas because I am so sick and tired of Windows.
So I just wanna ask, When I install ubuntu on my T60 its not gonna mess up my partitions right? I want to format the partition I have windows on and install Ubuntu on the free space there. But about my other partitions, are Ubuntu going to be able to see them?

Yes, it will see them. The way you are doing it makes it alot easier. Main problem would be identifying which is which.

May be it would make the transition to Linux smoother if you just resize your windows partition to make room for your linux system (4-5 GB) plus a swap partition (rule of thumb: Double size of RAM).
Then grub will identify your windows system and let you boot it as well. So may be some time, if you feel the need to boot windows (naughty you!!!), you are able to do so.
But aaa is right with his judgement about your partitions.
You could give them labels like data or windows, or anything else, from a linux Live-CD.
There are different tools for different filesystems to apply the names.
Feel free to ask or ggogle for label and the filesystem type you have.

cheers Micha

Be sure to create a set of recovery discs before doing anything else. Just in case something goes wrong.

Thanks for the replies guys
I'm counting on getting a External harddisk this christmas, so I think I'm just gonna transfer my files on that and then do a Low level format on my harddrive (Seems like it could use it)

So I'm just gonna install Linux on a completely fresh harddrive without all the garbage from lenovo ...

Actually I suspect that something is hiding in MBR So I'll low level format it right away.

you should check out pmagic (or gparted) livecd. basically it is a (free!) live os on cd that lets you non-destructively resize/partition/etc. a disk (similar to partition magic. but free!)

the one amazingly crazy awesome feature it has (been using it for years but I only learned this feature few months ago...!) is that you can copy+paste partitions, even from one disk to another disk. i.e. you can hook up your external usb disk, boot the livecd, and with a few clicks copy the windows partition and then paste it to your external disk... everything will be preserved 100%. neat huh?

it is truly useful to make perfect backup of a windows (or any other os) install, or to move your os to a new drive, etc. etc.

(the only issue I've had with copy/paste windows partitions to a backup disk or new drive, is that sometimes the nt bootloader stuff survives just fine and sometimes it does not... in this case it's necessary to boot your xp cd into the recovery console and do the whole fixboot/fixmbr stuff. annoying but only a few minutes extra work. microsoft should just switch to grub as a bootloader... bsd already has lol)

oh and both pmagic and gparted distro have a liveusb option: you can put them on a usb key or sd card or whatever you like. I usually use the cd but the liveusb is well worth trying when you have a X series with no cd drive!

Hi tarvoke,
just save your MBR in a file with That is with /dev/hda as the device and gives a small file and might be restored with greetings Micha

michaaa62, this is exactly what gparted does ("the right thing") when you copy/paste a ntfs or fat32 partition -- if it notices that drive having ntldr, it will (try to) copy it. for some reason (mainly when copying to a usb drive, I've noticed) it doesn't always work.

your suggestion is a good one, thanks! next time I will try to remember and give it a shot. it will be interesting to see if the problem is from gparted, or if it is in fact something related to linux usb drivers.

on machines where I have windows only, I have even got into the habit of putting some other bootloader e.g. xosl or sbm or extipl -- a small hassle but often makes life easier. (and sbm and xosl are quite nice to boot cd or usb, on older machines whose bios does not allow to boot from cd or from usb)