create a 20~30Gb ext3 patition that you mount as / and the rest of the disk as ext3 mounted as /home. That way, if you have to reinstall linux, all your files will be safe. You would end up with the following partitions:

On Jan 18, 2009, at 18/1/09 - 6:52, Xie Jiabao wrote:

Dear all,

My sincere apologies at the outset for a non-ccp4 question. I am trying to install ubuntu-8.04.1 (64-bit) linux on my windows xp containing core2 laptop so as to create a dual boot system. At the moment windows xp is installed on a 30GB partition and there is another 20 GB FAT32 partition which was created to share data between windows and linux once the latter was installed, and 110 GB of free space. I have a few questions which I would like addressed before I install linux.

a) I would like to create a linux swap partition of 4-6 GB and have the rest as an ext3 linux partition. Should these new partitions be primary or logical partitions? What is the difference between primary and logical partitions?

b) Should these new partitions be located at the end of my hard disk since Windows likes to be next to the first sector (MBR)?

c) Should the new partitions be mounted as /swap and /root or /home?

Thanks in advance,

Xie