I want to take the leap and go Linux Ubuntu

JasX

ouch, older IDE/ATA laptop hard drives seem to be terrible value.... found this minimum spec 250GB one on ebuyer for £60 and couldn;t do much better on Amazon

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/132386

you can get bigger portable/external drives for that money

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/161318 (320GB - £47.99)

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/177266 (500GB - £59.99)

and if you're willing to have an external mains powered drive you could probably get 1TB for around £60.....

BillScarab

Scan have the same 250Gb one for £60.93 or the 320Gb one for £68.15

Given the cost of the internal drives personally I would buy a big external drive, do a disk image of your current windows install so you cn reload it if you ever need it, back up any data you need. Then format the internal disk and install Linux on that.

But if you do wnat to replace the internal drive I'd personally go for the 320Gb drive !!! it's only £8 more.

ses6jwg

found this one

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Samsung-HM160HC-160GB-2-5-IDE-PATA-Laptop-Hard-Drive_W0QQitemZ260504309029QQcmdZViewItemQQptZUK_Computing_HardDrives_RL?hash=item3ca7444d25

ses6jwg

BillScarab wrote: »

Scan have the same 250Gb one for £60.93 or the 320Gb one for £68.15

Given the cost of the internal drives personally I would buy a big external drive, do a disk image of your current windows install so you cn reload it if you ever need it, back up any data you need. Then format the internal disk and install Linux on that.

But if you do wnat to replace the internal drive I'd personally go for the 320Gb drive !!! it's only £8 more.

I have a 250gb external drive already.

Is there a piece of software that will let me ghost the image of my existing XP set up, so I can reinstall that if ever I need to?

I wouldnt mind just flashing he existing hard drive.

gaming_guy

ses6jwg wrote: »

Is there a piece of software that will let me ghost the image of my existing XP set up, so I can reinstall that if ever I need to?

Clonezilla.

http://clonezilla.org/

BillScarab

You can use stuff like Norton ghost or Acronis Trueimage (my personal choice). They both cist though, however you can get a version of Trueimage free if you have a seagate or maxtor hard drive.

BTW that Samsung drive is also on ebuyer for a couple of quid more if you prefer the security of buying from a shop rather than ebay.

ses6jwg

Thanks for that.

I'll back all my stuff up tomorrow night and wipe it clean with a fresh install of Ubuntu, wish me luck

BillScarab

Good luck.

It's a while since I've installed Ubuntu but it's straightforward. You could even set it up as a dual boot if you wnated and get rid of Windows when you're happy Ubuntu is for you.

ses6jwg

Was tempted by the dual boot but then I saw that it would leave me with 20gb of space left.

If I run Linux on its own it leaves me with 56gb.

S0litaire

If you go the dual boot option 20Gb for linux is enough for you to use at first. You have enough room for XP to be installed and run fine (depending on what software you install).

I've currently got my Win7 install happily on 32Gb partition (But i hardly use it!)

Later if you don't want dual boot it's simple to remove the other OS (whichever you decide to dump) and enlarge the drive of the surviving OS.

Think it took me 6 months of use to fill my 20Gb Linux partition (but i moved items over to my Windows partition from time to time).