dual boot vista and hardy heron on studio 1535

i got my studio just 2 days ago. i had basically a C drive with vista and another drive of 10 gb for recovery.

i somehow lost vista while trying to create partition for ubuntu 8.04.
i have now reinstalled vista with the given dvd. i have made 3 partitions(earlier 2). i didnt alter the recovery partition. i have created a new partition of 60 gb for vista, and another partition of 162 gb.

1] i still didnt get how to use the recovery drive?can anyone explain?

2] one more thing.

when i see the partitions in the ubuntu installer. i find 4 primary partitions. one stupid fat16 parition of 115 mb.
because of which i am not able to make another primary partition for my hardy heron.

does anybody have any clue about the fat 16 115 mb partition?

3]could i delete the recovery partition and use it for ubuntu?


this is my first ever experience with laptop. desktops are always far simpler i think.

 

I'm guessing your problem is you don't have an extra partition to designate as swap? You can increase the number of partitions on your hard drive by using Logical and Extended partitions. They don't all have to be primary partitions.

Also, it could help if you tell us what partition scheme you're planning to make for the Ubuntu installation. I.E. Are you planning to have a separate partition for /home?

P.S. I've never had to use the recovery partition, and I removed it from my Dell without repercussions. I wouldn't trust it to do a system recovery anyway. Unfortunately I don't know what that tiny FAT partition is for either, and I've never bothered with it because it's in an annoying spot in front of the windows partition.

 

I would remove the recovery partition, and expand Vista to swallow it up.

For Ubuntu you would want basically:

/ partition at least 10gig
/home partition (rest of harddrive)
/swap partition (1 - 2 gigs)

You should end up with 4 partitions....a Vista partition and the 3 above. Resize in Vista to get what you want.