Ok, I recently got this netbook that came with Windows 7 and wanted to install Linux on it as well for a dual-boot. It came with four primary partitions on a 250 GB HDD, those being:
- 15 GB recovery partition
- 100 MB system reserved
- Drive C, chose 45 GB for it
- Drive D, left the rest there
Now as you'll notice, the partitions are already capped and I can't install Linux there without deleting at least one of them. Problem is that since Windows doesn't really recognize the ext2/3/4 file systems, it's a lot more convenient to keep a NTFS partition as a shared partition (for content like pictures, videos, etc.) for the two OS's.
It'd be simple, if I could just change the last partition into an extended one, but I'm pretty sure that the /boot directory on Linux needs to be on a primary partition. Thus, I'd need to scrap two of the above partitions. And since the netbook didn't come with an install DVD, I need to leave the recovery partition there to be able to recover Windows from any corruptions or other problems.
Thus can I delete the system reserved partition without it causing any problems later on 7? From what I gathered on my googling streak, it probably isn't required, but I'd rather not take the chance of screwing up my Windows system totally.
The only other option I see is putting both the system files of Windows and the shared info on one big NTFS partition and then making a single / partition for the Linux and using a swap file instead of a swap logical partition, but I'd rather have my shared stuff and non-bootable Linux directories as separate logical parts of an extended partition with /boot on a primary partition.
Of course, if someone can point me towards an even better solution, I'd be more than happy to try that.