[Bug 376765] Re: Partition Problems with Install Process with 9.04

[OldeFoxx]

I use multiple drives in a couple of desktops, and still have 9.04 on
them.   I also use VirtualBox and have Windows 2000 Pro installed.  And
by some coincidence, I divide each into three Ubuntu Partitions and have
three swap partitions, one for each Ubuntu partition.  Maybe I am doing
things differently.  First, I also use manual mode, and partition the
whole drive during the first install.  That means I set up all the
partitions on the first go around, then I install Ubuntu on the third
and leave the other two unused. I have only the third swap designated as
swap.  That over, I go back around and do the second partition and the
second swap.  Then on the third go around I do the first partition and
the first swap.  I recall that I could see multiple drives when I did
this, but I figured three Ubuntu Partitions were enough for my purpose,
The second hard drive was just divided up into two Windows 2000 Pro
partitions.

I always ran into issues when I did this, mostly because the drives were
not pristine.  Because one partition or another might fail at some
point, I spent a lot of time in recovery efforts to get my data back.  I
ended up sharing the drives as Shared Folders under VirtualBox, and
moved data about, mostly making multiple copies of my VDI files on each
drive.

I learned to use a gparted.iso image I found online to manage my drives
when I had trouble booting up.  It helped a lot.  But I am not informed
enough to use the recovery mode to get back a failed installation if you
try to boot Ubuntu anyway.  You get to a certain point in the process,
you have to tell it what to do next or take over manually.  Should be a
book written on the subject of what to do then.

I am now using 10.04 LTS on my laptop, which I upgraded to a 1TB drive.
They are more plentiful now and the prices have gone down to $100 or
less.  I got two for a total price of under $176.  That gives me a
spare.  I had also bought a 1TB My Passport for under $100 that is also
2.5" in size.  That is small enough to sit under my laptop on a lap
board that has a mount built up of three layers of paint sticks that I
got for free from a hardware store.  Had to pay for the white glue to
bond them together of course.  I did not buy the drives all at once,
just as I felt I could afford them.  I interlace the paint sticks to
ensure there is good air flow between them.  Don't want the laptop to
get too hot.

Anyway I now have a 17" laptop with a 1TB internal and 1TB external
drive connected.  The external drive is formatted NTFS  still and I just
copy files to it.  The internal 1TB is divided into 3 Ubuntu partitions
and now I only use one swap partition, not three.  That's a total of
four partitions for the internal drive.  I know you can get away with
more than four partitions on a hard drive, but I decided to  try just
four, and it works fine.  I had thought the matter through again, and
while in theory you can have more than one Windows 2000 Pro up and
running at once, you are limited by the devices such as the DVD/CD drive
and external drive as to what can be shared.  Besides if you want access
to the files on a different client, just mount that client as an
alternative under Storage in your settings.  That way you only have to
deal with one instance of Windows 2000 Pro at a time.

I've also used the NTFS drive and other two partitions under Ubuntu to
house my /home folders and files, in preparation for totally
reformatting one of the Ubuntu partitions if I suspect partition
problems.  Otherwise, I might just reinstall over the existing version
with the same or later version and elect not to reformat that partition
as part of the install.  The only folders and files replaces have to do
with the system, and the others are fine as they are.  Of course
reinstalling Ubuntu means also having to reinstall VirtualBox and other
added packages, but you get the knack of it after awhile.

I'm just passing on my experiences.  What I can tell you is super
important if you don't want to keep wasting your time repeating yourself
is to work with the best drives you can get or afford.  I even wrote a
comment under suggestions with Oracle is that they ought to make using
VirtualBox redundant so that it one VDI file fails for any reason, you
have a clone there to keep working with, and it goes further by
producing a new clone of itself so that the redundancy keeps moving
forward.  You don't have that as a feature, so you have to take some
time to keep the cloning process going on your own.

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/376765

Title:
  Partition Problems with Install Process with 9.04

Status in “ubiquity” package in Ubuntu:
  New

Bug description:
  I want two 320 GB hard drives to have three Ubuntu partitions each,
  with VirtualBox installed and Windows 2000 Pro or other OS set up on
  each as a guest.  The idea is to make each it so that each VDI
  includes a lot of disk space.

  First install for Ubuntu went well enough.  Only one drive showed up
  though, but there were two images of it on the partitioning choice
  screen.  I selected Manual, then used that to divide the disk into
  three large partitions for Ubuntu, and had three more for swaps.  Each
  partition install would get its own swap as a resulot.  So six
  partitions in all for that drive.

  So far so good.  But the installer lost it on the second install,
  because the drive was now divided into six partitions, and the display
  was too long.  There were two horizontal scroll bars for each drive,
  but again only one drive was displayed in the two locations.  But now
  the Forward button was too far to the right to appear on the screen.
  I could not find a way around this.  Going back instead, I found each
  of the proceeding screens had now widen so much that the Forward
  button on each was now off screen as well.  So you can go back, or
  quit, but you cannot go forward.

  So, two problems:  Two hard drives, but only one displayed, and shows
  up twice.  And when enough disk space is involved, the buttrons on the
  bottom of the screen can get pushed so far to the right that they go
  off screen.  Why not put the Back/Quit/Forward buttons at about the
  center of the screen and independent of the right border?

  I also noted that there are some options missing with regards to the
  partitioner.  These include:

  No way to designate an existing partition as the target for an Ubuntu
  install.  The choices are limited to reusing the whole drive, dividing
  up the free disk space equally, or opt to go manual.  Manual is too
  advanced for most users to attempt.  A few more choices might be
  better, such as (R) Replace existing install of Windows or other OS on
  an identified partition, (I) Install Ubuntu on some portion of
  remaining free space, or (S) Set up Ubuntu as an application as part
  of the existing OS (the last choice might be a bit tricky to
  implement, but if you can do it, that might be welcomed).

  Oh yes, if any one of the installer's screens wants to go off the deep
  end in this manner, why not provide a driver disk so that some effort
  to upgrade the screen resolution beyond 800x600 is possible?  If there
  is enough RAM involved, the changes could be temporary, or the drivers
  could be also added during the final stages of the install as the
  default settings for video.

  It bugs me that the installer just assumed that only one hard drive
  was involved.  At least it appears that is what it did, or it simply
  failed to present the second drive properly, just showing the data for
  the first (or second) one over again.  Even the drive designations for
  each partition was exactly the same between the top and bottom
  showings.

  Incidently, I did report this on the forums yesterday, but on
  reconsideration, felt it was worth the added effort to work out how to
  submit a bug report.  It took me a long tme to find where i could
  actually write up and submit this report,  though many references were
  turned up in my Google search.

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