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I am windows user. Now I want a dual boot with linux. A screen shot of my computer's disk management:

disk management screenshot

Which partition do you recommend I shrink? And if I'm not mistaken, operating system must installed inside primary partition type. What is the limit on primary partitions on one HDD?

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Linux can be installed in any partition (primary or logical). Only Windows has some limitations, but maybe the newest windows versions don't have them anymore. I would recommend to shrink the last (D:) partition and create a new one after the last partition.

With a good linux distribution, it is very unlikely that something goes wrong during installation. Regardless, I would strongly recommend to make a backup of your system before installation and before you shrink your partition.

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  • some windows only allow 4 partitions, so OP might want to move data on D: to C: and install Linux on D:
    – Ben Plont
    Commented Jun 29, 2013 at 15:43
  • Windows can be installed in an extended partition as well, only the boot partition needs to be primary. @BenPlont: Technically that a limitation of the MBR partitioning scheme, not Windows. GPT will allow you to have up to 128 "primary" partitions.
    – Karan
    Commented Jun 29, 2013 at 18:58
  • @Karan, that is true. I thought that since the screenshot shows 4 partitions rather than volumes, OP had MBR rather that GUID.
    – Ben Plont
    Commented Jun 29, 2013 at 21:43
  • Nothing in the screen shot clearly identifies the disk as being MBR or GPT. For that, you need to right-click on "Disk 0" in the screen shot, click "Properties" in the pop-up menu, and select the "Volumes" tab in the resulting dialog box. The "Partition Style" line identifies the partition table type. See this page for more details.
    – Rod Smith
    Commented Jun 30, 2013 at 16:36

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