I am trying to install Ubuntu 11.10 alongside Windows XP. When I am prompted where I want to install Ubuntu, the three options to select from are:
- Install Ubuntu alongside Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition
- Overwrite Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition with Ubuntu
- Something else
When I selection option 1, by default Ubuntu Installer selects the 1TB external hard drive that I have connected to the computer. There appears to be an option to select another hard drive, however, I cannot use it to change to another drive. In other words, the drop down list does not work.
What I want to be able to do is to install Ubuntu on another (internal) 320GB hard drive that I have purchased for this very reason. My problem here is that I am not certain how to partition it for Ubuntu using option 3. I know that I will require a /
partition and a /boot
partition, however, I am not sure how much to allocate to each. Furthermore, there appears to be more file systems to select from. Which one do I use for each partition I create? Also, the intended target drive is currently formatted with NTFS. Do I need to manually delete and re-create the partition to ext2 before I am able to install Ubuntu?
FYI - My current configuration is as follows:
/dev/sda
/dev/sda1 fat16 32MB
/dev/sda2 ntfs 160GB
/dev/sdb
/dev/sdb1 ntfs 320GB
/dev/sdc
/dev/sdc5 fat32 1000GB
Note that the /dev/sda1
is the partition reserved for EISA (whatever that is), /dev/sda2
is the partition that contains the Windows XP Home Edition, /dev/sdb1
is the new internal hard drive that I intend to install Ubuntu, and /dev/sdc5
is the external drive which is used as a backup drive only. For some reason, Windows XP uses this external drive to store temporary/configuration files for software that is installed on /dev/sd2
.
Any help/advice would be appreciated.