Hard disk partitioning to dual boot Windows 7 and Ubuntu 11.10

Question

I have a single hard disk with 2 partitions (C & D) and C has Windows 7 installed on it. I want to install Ubuntu as well but on D drive so the operating systems are separated. I could not figure out how to do the partitioning.

Note: I don't want to use Wubi. Note: I know that if the whole D drive (it's about 200GB) is saved for Ubuntu which uses Ext3, then I will not be able to read/write from/to D.

Answer 1

Assuming both C + D are NTFS and youw want to be able to use D with Windows, you are not going to be able to do what you want.

Your best bet is to shrink D down, perhaps by 50GB to give Ubuntu 50GB to play with (you can probably use half this amount, it depends on your usage profile, so 50GB will allow for most scenarios). Then use the 50GB to install Ubuntu.

You can shrink D: in Disk Manager in Windows. Once you have installed Ubuntu, you can still access the D: drive, as Ubuntu can write to NTFS partitions (whereas Windows cannot easily write to anything other than NTFS or FAT partitions).