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I'm probably being daft but hit a wall.
My new hard drive arrived today, so I installed Windows on it. As this SSD is 240GB I would like to also install Ubuntu. This machine is a laptop. My previous setup I also split the OS and Data into separate partitions in case the OS was fubarred I can just re-install without losing files.

My goal was to have a partition each for Windows 7 and Ubuntu (so this is two separate partitions, three including swap). Also, a separate NTFS partition for files. However Windows has created a "system reserved" partition.

So currently I have: system reserved, Windows, Ubuntu, swap, free space

When I go to make the free space an NTFS partition I'm told the drive already contains the maximum number of partitions.

Am I doing something wrong?

[mellowd]

I'm pretty sure you can only have 4 primary partitions per disk

May be I can make the swap partition, a logical partition instead to overcome this.

Thanks Darren.

Nope, deleting the swap and recreating just puts it back as a primary.

I'm going to follow this tutorial regarding the first, windows system partition
http://www.shivaranjan.com/2009/05/11/h ... tallation/

Not sure what the repercussions are..

Isn't there an easier way?

[mellowd]

Don't create a swap partition

I've only got 4gb ram, think I need it. It's recommended.. ?

I've only got 4gb ram, think I need it. It's recommended.. ?

I don't think you need much if it's just Ubuntu you're running, 4 gig should be ample unless you are trying to do loads of things at once.
Boot up Ubuntu and see what ram it's using when running under your normal workload.

Done a quick bit of googling, swap is used for other bits n pieces like sleep, so I'll need swap.
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/SwapFaq/

I believe creating an extended partition for the linux side should work. Been a while but look into the extended partition solution.

[jdsilva]

You can only create 4 partitions, true, but one of those can be an extended partition that within that you can create logical partitions. I haven't looked in a while, but you used to not be able to boot from a logical partition, so keep that in mind.

Swap is the equivalent to a windows page file. If you have enough RAM there's no reason why you can't do away with your swap partition, but if you don't have enough ram and you kill swap you'll notice a big performance drop.

Don't create a swap partition

^this.
Don't create a swap partition, use a swap file.

"e="jdsilva"]You can only create 4 partitions, true, but one of those can be an extended partition that within that you can create logical partitions. I haven't looked in a while, but you used to not be able to boot from a logical partition, so keep that in mind.

Swap is the equivalent to a windows page file. If you have enough RAM there's no reason why you can't do away with your swap partition, but if you don't have enough ram and you kill swap you'll notice a big performance drop.[/quote]
"

Since when swap partition became such a big deal? I don't have it on any of my machines and they are working just fine.

I now have,
Windows,
Linux,
Swap
Data

All done