First time installing Ubuntu

Question

I want to install Ubuntu instead of Win10 64bit. I have 2 hard drives, the first one is M2 128 Giga for OS, and the another one is hdd 750 Giga for storing source files and videos. Will it let me choose which one is used for the operating system or it will choose automatically? I am afraid of loosing the videos and data stored in hdd. And another question. Will I be able to see the videos and data on hdd and benefit from them?

Answer 1

If both hard drives are seprated but they are in one cpu than you are not gonna loose any data at all. But if you install ubuntu in 128 Giga u have to choose the something else option while installing than select \ bar in front of space where you want to install your OS. or you have one Hard Drive of 1TB then u have to choose very wisely. try this videos on youtube for more details (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G7ffzC4S0A4) (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X-DHaQLrBi8)

Answer 2

I have to made some assumptions in my answer, as you provided too little details about your setup. The general answer to your questions is: yes, you can choose which drive to install Ubuntu on; and yes, you will be able to keep the videos and data on your second drive and you will be able to access them from Ubuntu.

However, you must be careful when installing the system.

I assume that your 128G drive with OS is C: in Windows, and your 750G drive with data is D: in Windows.

When you boot from Ubuntu live DVD/USB, do not start the installation right away. Take some time to learn your current disk partition structure.

Run either "Disks" tool or GParted from the live Ubuntu system and take a look at your both disks. Your Windows drive will probably have two partitions (or maybe three, if you use UEFI for boot). Your data drive will probably have only one partition spanning the entire disk. Note the names of the partitions that the tool displays. I use here my computer as example, but your names may be different, so you need to use the actual names that the tool displays.

In my case, on first (Windows) disk there were two partitions called /dev/sda1 and /dev/sda2. /dev/sda1 was a "reserved" partition that Windows 10 uses to boot - it is usually very small; /dev/sda2 was the actual partition corresponding to Windows C: drive that contained all the Windows files. It took the rest of the disk. The computer uses legacy mode to boot so there is no UEFI partition. I'm not sure what will be the case with UEFI - it is possible that UEFI partition will be instead of the "reserved" partition, or maybe there will be both UEFI and "reserved" partition (in that case there will be three partitions).

The other (data) disk had a single partition /dev/sdb1. All partitions were formatted with the NTFS file system, as this is the native file system for Windows.

If there is an UEFI partition, you need to keep it, as it is needed for the system to boot. The "reserved" partition is not needed for Ubuntu; you can delete it, and extend the "system" partition (/dev/sda2) with the space that was used by "reserved" partition. However, if you are unsure how to do it, you can keep the "reserved" partition - it will be unused, but it doesn't take much disk space. Note that if you delete the "reserved" partition, and resize the "system" partition, the name of the "system" partition may change - check once agaiun before starting installation.

Now start the Ubuntu installer and when the installer asks you, whether you want to replace Windows with Ubuntu, etc. select the last option - "Something else" - for custom partitioning. Choose your "system" partition (eg. /dev/sda2) as a location for your root (/) filesystem and tell the installer to format it (you must reformat it to Linux file system, which by default is ext4).

Next, add another mount point and select your "data" partition (eg. /dev/sdb2) to be mounted at /data and tell the installer to NOT format it (since you don't want to lose the contents there). Note: someone already suggested to use /home for this partition. I'm suggesting a separate mount point /data, because a) you already have some contents there, and Linux during installation will by default create some contents in /home; and b) NTFS file system is not a very good choice for /home directory as it doesn't properly support Linux permissions.

The installer will also ask you (I'm not sure if this is on the same screen or on some of the next ones) where to put the boot loader. Choose your first drive (/dev/sda).

If you did everything correctly, after the installation the contents of your 750G drive should be available under the /data directory.