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I'm trying to dual boot Ubuntu with Windows Xp. Windows is on the C drive and I want to install Ubuntu on the D drive. When I get to the partitions table during installation, there should be a dev/sda and a dev/sdb options, but the second isn't there. All I can choose from are dev/sda, dev/sda1 and dev/sda5. I really don't know which one should I choose so that I don't screw up Windows.

I'm installing Ubuntu from a USB flash drive.

Tim
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user266666
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  • The question is: could you provide a screenshot? The D: drive will probably just be a partition on your (only) drive. – Jacob Vlijm Apr 08 '14 at 13:42

2 Answers2

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You probably only have 1 physical harddrive. But with 2 partitions. Therefore only /dev/sda is present. The partitions are /dev/sda1 and /dev/sda5. My bet would be that sda1 is your Windows partition while sda5 is your desired partition for Ubuntu.

Dan Johansen
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    That is only a guess, though. It's also possible that one of these is a recovery partition installed by the PC maker, or an EFI partition, or something like that. – thomasrutter Apr 08 '14 at 14:20
  • @neon_overload That is true, but as he didn't mention any other partitions, and Windows Xp does not create other partitions on it's own, it is the most likely option. Although, still only a bet (as I wrote). :) – Dan Johansen Apr 08 '14 at 14:22
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You probably want to install Ubuntu into "unused space on /dev/sda", and to "re-size existing partitions to make room".

Your /dev/sda1 and /dev/sda5 are existing partitions. It's not clear why there's two of them (unless you did that yourself), but it could be that one is your C: drive and another is a recovery partition or some other utility partition set up by your computer manufacturer.

You do not want to just assume which partition is which and overwrite one. Unless you have specifically saved some unpartitioned space on your drive, you probably have existing partitions occupying the entire disk and will need to re-size the larger one to make room.

thomasrutter
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