Dual-booting with windows 8 (lots of partitions)

Question

I've just received my new Samsung 550p5c-AD1 which comes with windows 8 and a very weird partition table.

I'd like to keep Windows8 and dualboot with Ubuntu (12.04.2 64bits).

However I'm little confused with all of those Partitions. It is like this:

SCSI1 (0,0,0) (sda) - 1.0 TB ATA ST1000LM024 HN-M 1.0 MB FREE SPACE

#1 523.2 MB ntfs bASIC DATA P

#2 314.6 MB B K EFIboot EFI system p

#3 134.2 MB Microsoft re

#4 974.8 GB ntfs Basic data p

#5 23.3 GB ntfs Basic data p

#6 1.1 GB fat32 Basic data p 728.1 KB FREE SPACE

How can I do? Should I resize Partition 4 (974GB)?

Woun't it mess up with Windows?

What in the world happened to that hard drive? Digital Tsunami? Electronic "hard quake". Can you add in what partition is the Windows system. the only one I can guess is #2 with the EFI boot. — Luis Alvarado, Mar 15 '13 at 16:26
See installing-ubuntu-on-a-pre-installed-uefi-supported-windows-8-system — user68186, Mar 15 '13 at 16:52
Looks like it is in the partition 4 (974GB). For me it is really odd as well, I've never seen this pattern of partition table. — rodhash, Mar 16 '13 at 20:40

score 1 · Answer 1 · edited Apr 13 '17 at 12:24

Well .. thanks a lot for all of the help!!

Dual boot worked perfectly!! I hope this little script helps, this is what I've just done (and worked so far):

Installation procedure on this link helped a lot!

Once Ubuntu was Up & Running I had little issue to boot Windows 8, which I fixed with boot-repair, also in the same link above.

Boot repair:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:yannubuntu/boot-repair  
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install boot-repair
$ boot-repair

And last step was fixing the overheating (I'm still testing but it is good so far) with bumblebee, that is for Nvidia & Intel dual graphic cards.

Installation on this wiki:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:bumblebee/stable
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install bumblebee bumblebee-nvidia linux-headers-generic

Thx!

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Mar 15 '13 at 16:32

0

It wouldn't mess with windows...

You can try a partition software and re-arange your partitions

(Windows 8 should have a small ~100MB system partition and another one for the OS ~50GB)

answered Mar 15 '13 at 16:32

Remus Rigo

237

I hope so.
Is the partition 4 (974GB) to be resized, correct?
– rodhash Mar 15 '13 at 19:39
Also, is it possible to resize and create 2 Partitions?
1 for /boot and 1 LVM (to install Linx)?
– rodhash Mar 15 '13 at 19:41
you can boot from a linux live CD/DVD and make the partitions as you want, you can combine two partitions. The only thing that will take time is when it moves data. If the partitions are almost full it will take a long time to process (2-5 hours, depending on how much data you have) – Remus Rigo Mar 16 '13 at 08:26
in the ubuntu's live cd terminal run "sudo apt-get install gparted" to install the partition manager – Remus Rigo Mar 16 '13 at 08:27
Ok, thanks a lot for your help!! I'm gonna try that. But before that I'm trying to make a back-up of my entire disk, maybe with dd or maybe with g4u, just in case something goes wrong .. Any suggestion? Or it's not needed? – rodhash Mar 16 '13 at 17:18

score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Mar 16 '13 at 08:37

0

Yes you can reduce partition 4, but it's safer to do it with Windows partitioning tools, not Linux tools.

answered Mar 16 '13 at 08:37

LovinBuntu

3,615
2
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Why do you say it's safer to use Windows for this? Also, how do you recommend doing it in Windows? You may want to give some brief advice about how to open Disk Management, assuming that's your recommendation. – Eliah Kagan Mar 16 '13 at 11:26
i've resized partitions under windows and linux and i had no problems – Remus Rigo Mar 17 '13 at 03:55

score 0 · Answer 4 · answered May 10 '15 at 03:46

To resize/shrink a partition or volume in Windows, open the Disk Management tool.

This can be found through a simple search in the Start Menu search bar.

Once you open the tool, either select an existing volume/partition to shrink/resize, or select unallocated space to create a new volume/partition with.

If you choose to make a new partition, you will be asked for the desired size in MB, that of which cannot exceed the amount of unallocated space on your HDD(s), depending upon your hardware configuration (and whether or not you have any separate storage locations, like an actual secondary or 'jaz' drive).

If you choose to shrink an existing partition/volume, you will be asked for how many MB you wish for the requested partition to be reduced by. The system will perform a query when you choose to do the shrink, indicating the amount of space you can shrink from your chosen volume/partition. Your MB size cannot exceed the maximum delineated, for the sake of the existing file system (unless you wish to risk overwriting files and corrupting existing the file system). This will leave you with more unallocated space when complete, which you can use to create a new partition.

Once performed, you can then create a new partition and delineate it as a sort of virtual drive, which can be formatted, allowing for read-write access. This partition is the one you can mount a new OS to, if you so choose. Just be sure to choose the correct file system format type first.

As an added note, Linux and some UNIX OSs tend to need at least 6-10 GB of free space. Mac OS X needs 10-20 GB. A new Windows or DOS-based system may need at least 10-20 GB or more. ChromeOS and Android are a bit more forgiving, needing only 8-16 GB.

Good Luck!

Dual-booting with windows 8 (lots of partitions)

4 Answers4