GParted-Partitioning Software

No matter which operating system you want to have installed on your machine, there's one thing they all have in common: partitions. These are logical pieces of your actual hard disk space, defining the size and the file system format for the operating systems and data that are going to be placed on them.

Being able to control the partitions is one of the most basic, most important aspects of mastering your operating system. If you have the knowledge and confidence to manipulate the layout, create it, change it or delete it, you can adapt your hardware to your varying needs, without having to blindly rely on default setups defined by vendors or other people.

I will tell my experience in using GParted ...
Around two months back,I installed ubuntu 9.04 on my friend's lap by partitioning the disk.It was my first attempt to install ubuntu by partitioning the harddisk.Till then i have experience with virtualbox only.It was her new lap,n had Windows Vista Premium installed on it.I told her that I will install ubuntu for her,she agreed and I started installing,I installed everything nicely and told her to reboot.Everything was fine.I told her to check logging on to Vista too,to check whether anything wrong with it after installing ubuntu.Ha ha there comes the problem,her other drives vanished,only her local C drive was left.I was really panic "what to do?".What i did was,while installing ubuntu i formatted her other two drives and allocated it for ubuntu and its swap.How nice know?!!!Her whole data in those drives went to heaven.I cant retrieve data,but I should make new partitions rite?I didnt have any idea about this,I contacted some of my seniors,one of them told me to go controlpanel->administrative tools->disk management and make new partition.That was a good idea,but that didnt work for me,because already the machine had 4 primary partitions,my hope lost.Then one of my senior told me to create partition using Gparted,I installed GParted in ubuntu.To run GParted,in terminal type sudo GParted,and then give the password.In GParted you can see how your harddrive is partitioned.You have options to delete,edit,or create new partitions in it.Once you have done your changes,click the Apply button,then your changes will be reflected.For my problem I created NTFS partition,so that she can access partitions both in Windows n Ubuntu.Thanks to Gparted,It was a great experience for me,I have learned a lot from this :)

A screenshot of GParted