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I am facing a problem while installing ubuntu along with win8. The specs about my pc are following:

500 GB HDD (c:100, d:100, f:50, g:100 h:100 i:50) and every drive has important data, and are NTFS

i have used Lili USB creator for creating bootable usb for ubuntu 12.04 LST. when i boot from usb, it asks me if i want to overwrite windows 8 or do something else, and i chose do something else. now the thing is, it shows me 3 drives having weird names (/sdv like something). first one is reserved (100 MB) second one is c (100 GB) and the last one is what left of hard disk memory (400 GB).

I have find out that i need to convert file system from NTFS to ext4 for installing ubuntu, which require formatting of my drives, and in this case either format c (windows 8) or what left of hard disk memory (every other thing).

can someone explain me what should i do to prevent from formatting any of my drive ?? thank you !!

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No, you don’t need to format any drive. You just need to make a new partition for Ubuntu and I guess it will be hard because of your numerous partitions. If you can merge your data of several partitions in one, it will be great. Consider that you can’t have more than 3 primary partitions, so you have to store your current data on extended partitions. Reserve 1 primary for Ubuntu. – AliNa Feb 13 at 22:57
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So, at first, if you have enough free space, try to merge your partitions data just by copying, and try to keep free spaces beside each other so that you can create a new partition out of them. For example, try to free the drive i first, and make some free space in h. – AliNa Feb 13 at 23:01
Is it possible to make a screenshot of your partition table and post it here? – AliNa Feb 13 at 23:11
@AliNa i am very glad to see your interest but it is not possible for me to upload screenshot because my repo is only 1 :P – Asad Ullah Feb 14 at 21:41
@AliNa please if there is some other solution, let me know... – Asad Ullah Feb 14 at 21:47
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You probably have a good reason for wanting to boot from a usb, but just in case that's just your chosen means of getting ubuntu onto your machine - you do know you can install ubuntu through the windows installer, right? This is probably simpler and requires no partitions.

I installed 12.04 using the windows installer through vista which itself was running through bootcamp on a MacPro. Rube Goldberg signed the guestbook and so far the ubuntu software is working fine. I mean, at some point you might want to partition or just get rid of windows entirely, but if like me this is your first installation of ubuntu then I think the windows installer is the easy road.

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yes about that, i have tried that too and it does not install ubuntu in my pc after all the things are done, it gives a horrible error and sometimes restart my pc automatically. – Asad Ullah Feb 14 at 21:39
I followed these directions and it worked for me, but I just now saw that the installer is not supported for Win8. Too bad. Hope you figure it out! ubuntu.com/download/help/install-ubuntu-with-windows – nbm Feb 14 at 22:30
I think the reason is the partitions. No difference; when there’s no space to make a new primary partition, also Wubi (Windows Ubuntu installer) can’t install Ubuntu. – AliNa Feb 14 at 23:58
@nbm i followed the exact procedure but ... ;( – Asad Ullah Feb 15 at 13:20
I hope you find a solution...it looks like it might be a drive space issue. You might try AliNa's suggestion of merging partitions. Reminder to back up your data first on an external drive! – nbm Feb 19 at 20:40

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