The story so far:
Two or three years ago, I gave a neighbour a home constructed PC with Ubuntu installed. Since then, he has installed each new release by means of an update rather than a fresh installation. During the recent download of 11.04 the hard drive departed this mortal vale of tears.
I've fitted a new 160Gb HDD and burned an installation disk of the latest release. During the formatting and partitioning procedure, everything comes to a halt and a dialogue box suggests manual partitioning might be in order. I find both the terminology and principles involved in this process difficult to understand which is why I was relying on the system to do it for me. What I have noticed is that Ubuntu 11.04 is apparently seeing a 22Gb disk. I attempted to install several earlier releases in an effort to get past the problem but things came to grief at the same point. However, I did manage to get things going with Linux Mint which sees the drive as it should. Said neighbour only really requires Internet access so isn't too bothered but, having said that, he would like to return to Ubuntu if possible as he has become used to it.
I don't have the old HDD to hand, but I think it was either a 40 or 80Gb drive. I recall that Win XP was unable to recognise drives bigger than 137Gb at one point so I wonder if similar problems exist here?
I've recently bought a second hand laptop with XP that I wish to dual boot with Ubuntu, but I'm wary of attempting the job until I find out what's going on. The laptop, BTW has a 100Gb drive.
Any advice will be gratefully received.
Ta
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