So I’ve spent quite a bit of time experimenting with my newly transferred drive (as mentioned in the last few dispatches ) and have to tell you that I am quite pleased all around.
I was quite certain (based on my last experiences ) that I would eventually have to roll back to the original drive, but the more I kicked the tires, the more programs I tried, the better the experience. Everything, without fail, Works!
Plus, remember how I mentioned that I would try to transfer whatever I could to my now much larger D drive (not being able to make the C drive/partition any bigger than it always was ) – well that worked too. I went from originally having less than 9% free disk space to over 55% free disk space. This was the equivalent of doubling the size of the drive – so I am quite happy on that front too!
My only challenge (yeah I know there always has to be one ) was installing Ubuntu/Linux on the extra free space that was now available (what was originally planned for the C drive if you recall .) No matter how hard I tried, no matter how many loops I went through, I could not create a dual boot disk (when you start up the computer you can load either one or the other operating system ) capable of starting up in either Windows or Linux!
Ubuntu installed beautifully on the free disk space. It even offered and actually transferred any and all documents in my Windows partition into the new Linux partition. Everything from the Linux position worked great, flawlessly, and much quicker than installing windows. The only problem was, no matter how I tried, the system would not find Linux to boot into!
For those who are interested, yes I originally used GRUB and it corrupted my MBR ( Master Boot Record – the computer needs this to be able to start up the disk .) Thankfully, there is a great dual boot utility (that as an aside is graphic based instead of text which is kind of cool ) called GAG. This allowed me to both create a dual boot menu OR “fix” the original MBR (which makes it a really cool emergency tool and much easier than using the original Windows installation disk ).
Unfortunately, even though Linux installed and was there, it refused to find it! So after days of experimentation, investigation and lots of frustration, I’m throwing in the towel. Everything that I have read and tried and tweaked and moved and re-installed has failed. I’m thinking now of just installing Ubuntu on a clean disk (like the one I upgraded from ) and making my life easier. I can always keep that extra disk space on my first drive for future use within Windows or Linux. But I suspect that won’t be for a while…
Till next time…
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