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[OCLUG-Tech] partitioning problems

Hi
For those of you who know me I should point out that I have
finally found a job, in Lethbridge Alberta.  I start work on Monday.

Everyone at work except myself uses windows but I have been
allowed to use Linux as long as I am my own sys admin.
I will be the user of the machine 90-99% of the time.

So this weekend I am trying to do a dual boot of Ubuntu 7.10 for the first
time.
Eventually I need to create a shared area that I and others can
both use but to keep things simple I did a dual boot without creating a
shared area
(I have never partitioned a disk before).

Windows XP seems to use about 10G but even after multiple defragmentations
it is spread out over appx.  40G.  Also, the windows defragmentor only
references about 140G even though I have a 160G drive.
So when I installed ubuntu 7.10 I (thought I) set it to use 95G of memory
(68%)
for Linux.
This was selected by moving an arrow selecting between 0 and 100 %.
This didn't give me the result I expected.  Windows does run but when I do a

df from ubuntu I see only about 60G of disk space (about 68% of 95G)
and it seems I have a volume? of approximately 95G.

So now I am confused.
I assume that what I should do is run some kind of partitioning program and
partition my 160G drive into:
40G for windows (I would like it to be less, say 30G).
30G for Linux (I would prefer 40G).
90G for a shared space accessible by Windows and Linux.

I downloaded and burned the system rescue CD  systemrescuecd-x86-0.43.iso.
Its documentation says I can use it to do the partition.

Must I partition my disk into volumes?  Any what is a volume anyway?
Any explanation as to what things I did wrong much appreciated.
Any explanation as to what I do now even more appreciated.
If I am provided with enough information by Sunday I will try again then.

By the way, my work machine is a Dell with an Intel dual core, 4G of memory
and a dual head graphics card (which I haven't got working yet). A big
improvement over my home machine.

Regards,

Ralph Boland

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