I recently purchased a laptop so I thought I would install Linux on it, as it would be handy to have and carrying around LiveCDs is a hassle. As Vista comes with a file system resize feature, it was easy to free up enough space for my Fedora or Ubuntu install. The process went through quickly and I started the Fedora installer, but I had to mess around with resolution and hardware detection settings for it not to freeze. I chose instead to try the new version of Ubuntu, 8.10 – Intrepid Ibex. The installer worked out of the box with no hardware issues until I encountered the rare screen for its disk partitioning software – I had only two options – ‘Guided (use whole disk)’ or ‘Manual’. I chose the ‘Manual’ option as I already prepared the free space in Vista.
This option brings up a screen that presents your partitions and information about them, and also the free space on the hard drives. The free space I had prepared came up as “unusable” and I couldn’t figure out why. I thought it was an issue with the Windows file system resizing feature so I tried an alternative with no success. Then I had a brainwave…
My laptop came with two partitions, one label ‘OS’ for the C: drive and another labeled ‘DATA” for the D: drive. There is also a hidden partition that OEMs like to use for recovery and other features. Through my school’s MSDNAA program, I am able to try out Microsoft software like Visual Studio and their operating systems. I took the opportunity to try Windows Server 2008 Datacenter so now the computer is up 4 partitions. All of them are set to be primary partitions, which means that Ubuntu cannot be installed on it until I free up a primary partition.
It should be documented in the installer as other people have encountered the same issue as I did without knowing the cause, but I decided to put it here as an alternative.