I know that similar questions have been asked, and I've researched all over the net for a concise, clear answer to this, but I have not been able to find a suitable solution.
I just built a new desktop with a 120GB SSD and a 2T HDD, and I installed a trial WIN7 on the front half of the SSD (OS) and the half 2T drive (Data) as UEFI/GPT, and tried to install Ubuntu on the remaining disk space, but ran into all kinds of problems. First off, I had to create a UEFI 3.0 USB stick for the WIN7 install because it would not recognize the SSD. I understand I could have changed that requirement in the BIOS so I would be booting into Legacy (MBR) format, but I went with the newer default settings. From what I've read so far, it seems that Ubuntu doesn't do an 'auto install' on a UEFI/GPT formatted disk, even though I am using a UEFI 3.0 USB ISO for that... it doesn't recognize the WIN7 OS, and I would need to manually format and install it, and then hope I can get the boot repaired afterwards.
This is what i want to do, and would like some feedback as to the best way to get it done: I want to install WIN7 and Ubuntu OS on the SSD (half each), and split the HDD for each system to store its own data. I will mostly be using the PC for video editing, and may need both OS, depending on what software I end up using. Here are my questions:
1) Is there enough of an advantage to using the UEFI/GPT partition/format scheme to be worth the trouble, as compared with doing the whole install in legacy/MBR mode? Will I lose much functionality or efficiency if I simply switch the bios to legacy and do everything that way, which seems to be much easier?
2) depending on which way I go (UEFI vs Legacy), what would be the best way to format the drives for a seamless install of both OS. If I go with UEFI, would it be best to format one primary partition on each drive as NTFS, or just leave it all 'unformatted', or ????... and,
3)what would be the best way to set up the drives for a clean install? maybe use Gpartd from the live USB Ubuntu stick to reformat everything, or ????
I do have some data and apps on the WIN7 installation that i would like to save and restore after I have everything running properly. I plan on using half the HDD as the D:/ drive for all my data and some apps for WIN7, which will probably end up being a NTFS partition which will be accessible from Ubuntu, but not vice versa. I can live with that. The other half of the HDD would be Ubuntu data, and I suppose that would be my '/' partition... thanks in advance for all your help.