Single partition or hd sharing

Hello,

I purchased a new I7-7200M laptop with 2 hard disks 320 GB each and i should like to know where is the best place to install CAElinux 2009-1 with the dual boot option.
The partitions actally red are:
C: with Windows7 on it leaving 40.5GB free on 74.5 NTFS
D:(data) 208 free on 208 GB NTFS
F: local disk 148GB free on 149 GB NTSF
G: local disk 148 GB free on 149 GB NTSF
The easiest way seems to follow the CAElinux installation wizard as guided-resized SCSI1 for dual boot on C: new partition.

But I wonder if using local disk F: would be a better way ? even if i d'nt intend to use intensively Windows7 today.
Thank for your advise.
Claude

It might be a good idea to free up some disk space from within Windows if you were not already planning to do so. It also lets you decide where exactly you want CAELinux and how much space to give it. The Windows disk management tool is really easy to use and almost surely wont kill Windows. The Ubuntu installer can definitely kill Windows.

Best regards,
- Matt Bondy

Hello Matt,

Sorry, to react so late to your post, I was out of my home these days.Thanks a lot for your attention.
So you think that freeing space within HD 0 which contains Windows and using windows installer instead of Ubuntu will be better and cautious. Really a lot of space is available here no problem about this.But you know that CAElinux is using Ubuntu installer so HD 1 seems the way to go. I have partition F and G with 149Gb each on this HD.
I was looking to the Ubuntu forum and i saw that GRUB intaller can overwrite the Windows MRB without warning. So your advice confirms this.

Regards

Claude

I have no experience with installing from within Windows but it does not seem a bad idea. It might prevent unintentional mistakes.

I do not know much about the capabilities of the GRUB included in CAELinux 2009 but I suspect it could overwrite the Windows boot loader and cause problems. I overwrote the MBR with CAELinux 2007 and had all kinds of problems but that was PCLinux and a much older GRUB. I have come across a few forum posts recently that seem to indicate that solutions now exist if this problem is encountered. I recently installed Fedora 12 on a machine and I dont like the results in terms of the bootloader. In the future I will be much more cautious. Everything works but I suspect there is a good chance that I will be wiping everything out the next time I install a new OS (CAELinux 2010?).

My first post was basically completely inspired by the indications that all your partitions are NTFS. I really do not know that much about Linux or Windows but in your shoes I would worry that if a Linux live DVD is used to reformat some space, Windows might perceive this erroneously. I just suggest using the Windows disk management to format whatever space you want for linux (ie create completely blank disk space for Linux with windows, that way windows wont be surprised by changing drive sizes). I might be wrong and windows will function perfectly regardless.

Also, if your computer didnt come with them I suggest creating a set of DVDs to restore Windows. I had a restore partition but when I took out GRUB it no longer worked. Without those disks I would have had to buy them from HP or buy a new copy of Windows.

Have fun,
- Matt Bondy