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I already have some data along with my windows operating system on my desktop. I intend to replace it with Ubuntu. So do I need to create a backup for my data even when I have more than 50 GB of free hard disk?

Abhinav Jha
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    Unless you want to risk loosing them you should already be making backups of personal data. Even when you do not mess with partitions and operating systems. Mind though ... 50Gb. Of what? Video's and music you can download again from the web? I backup my personal data every day to a google drive. But I do not feel the need to backup video files from the anime series I follow... I trust my sources to do that for me. – Rinzwind Jul 11 '17 at 07:06

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Backing up your data is always a good idea in case of problems.

50 GB unallocated space is enough to install Ubuntu.
It will not erase the other partitions, provided you pick the right install option (use free space).

ravery
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If you create a new partition along side your already existing windows partition, you can perform your Ubuntu installation without any data loss. You can do this by reading my answer to this question. My answer is currently the second one and perform the part about disk defragmentation (the stuff I did with e4defrag) by using Window's Defregmentation utility. After creating your new partitions and filesystems (ext4 for the main Ubuntu install and a 5GB SWAP partition for SWAP), just go on to install the Ubuntu on your new partitions. No reason to touch the existing Windows partition, no risk of data loss.

endrias
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  • There's no such thing as no risk of data loss... Any drive can fail at any time, to start with something. This is a data loss without doing anything whatsoever. Now imagine for example a power outage while installing resulting in a corrupted drive. Other situations happen as well, this is a very real risk. –  Jul 12 '17 at 12:44