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I have a live usb created from linuxliveusb. I have win 7 installed and have 60 gb of unallocated space. I would like to install my ubuntu (12.04) in a primary partition (since someone instructed me to install my linux in a primary partition, but need your views on this). I have only one primary partition and have win7 installed on it. Partitioning in native win 7 disk management only creates logical drive. So, I decided to use linux partitioning tool while installing.

I have following questions which I need clarification

1) If I use install time advanced manual partitioning in a live usb installation, will it reflect permanently?
2) should I use primary partition for ubuntu installation ? If yes, how can I create primary partition during installation.
3)I haven't tried a usb installation myself, but I oversaw an usb installation in another machine in which, grub got installed in the usb and not in the hard drive. This created some problems, and the installation has to be repeated with fresh formatting. I'm slightly apprehensive of installing from usb (but I don't have cd installation option either) and would need some pointers on what cautionary measures I should take during usb installation?

Any help will be appreciated.

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  • I have installed using LiveUSB and its working fine. Feel free to use it.
    – VedVals
    Dec 4, 2012 at 9:18

2 Answers 2

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  1. Yes, the changes will be permanent

  2. No, you don't need to use a primary partition. Yes, you can create any type of partition during the installation

  3. This should not happen, if it happens this is a bug in the installer. However, if this happens you can always boot from the USB again and to re-install GRUB on your hard drive.

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There is no need to create primary partition for ubuntu. Ubuntu runs from logical partition very well.

Create a partition from windows and install ubuntu onto that. Choose Something else option in install operation.

Select the created disk, click on edit. choose file system as ext4 and mount /.

Optionally create a SWAP partition.

After that there will be a page with an option GRUB will be installed on and a dropdown. Make sure it's your hard disk (it should be named as sda)

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  • It is safer to not create a partition from Windows but to delete the partition where Ubuntu should go to. This will make sure that 1) the installer auto-installs to the now free space on the hard drive, and 2) we do not need a risky manual partition while installing.
    – Takkat
    Dec 4, 2012 at 7:16
  • Actually, I don't think it is possible to install Ubuntu on a partition created in Windows in the way described - the partition ID will be different - for Linux it is 0x83, and for NTFS it is likely 0x07 - en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Partition_type . It is possible to change the ID using fdisk, but it is easier, as Takkat suggests, to delete a partition in Windows to let Ubuntu installer to use the free space.
    – Sergey
    Dec 4, 2012 at 20:30

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