I have just bought a brand new Dell computer and have been trying to get it set up to my needs. But I seem to have run in to a bit of a problem.

I am going to use this computer for mostly programming. However, I am also going to need it for schoolwork as well. To meet both requirements, I have decided to do a dual boot with both windows and Ubuntu. But when I went to set up my disk partitions, the disk manager only let me cut my windows partition in half.

A quick google search told me that this was because windows put some really important files that are required to boot windows in the middle of their disk space. Not the way I would have done it.

Anyway, a simple solution would be to just do what windows wants and simply cut the drive in half. With a 1 terabyte hard drive, I'm sure I would have plenty for Ubuntu.

But it seems wasteful doesn't it, setting aside more than half of your hard drive to an operating system you will use a lot less than half the time. Plus, I'm sure there are other people who would benefit from knowing the answer to this question.

All that I've found so far as to solutions that don't involve sketchy third-party software, is I could make a recovery disk of windows, install Ubuntu over windows, set up my partitions, reinstall windows with the recovery disk, and finally update grub. This solution could, in theory, work. Or go terribly wrong and ruin my brand new computer.

If anyone can think of any other, better ways to accomplish this goal, your advice would be hugely appreciated.