I have an HP Laptop that already has 3 partitions for recovery purposes. I don’t think that I’d be able to put in 3 more partitions for Linux. (Tell me if I’m wrong on this.) So I have a 64GB Patriot Flash USB Drive that I thought I’d use to boot into Linux. I haven’t checkec my Bios to see if the USB drive would be a bootable option, I assume that it could be, so assuming that is true, could it be done?
You can have a fourth extended partition in which you can put as many partitions as you want. Not you will have to resize and/or move the other partition to make room for the new one. WARNING any time you play with partitions you have a chance to do something wrong that could cause data lose so always backup any important data first.
In theory you can put it on a flash drive, but such devices are not really made to contains active files. they are NOT the same as SSD (Solid State Drives) and flash memory does ware out. You can only write so many times to flash before it becomes trash.
Ok then. I have created an unformatted volume in Windows 7 of 120GB. How should I set that up for Linux installation?
When you have a disk free for installing Linux, start the installation and when it comes to the partitioning part, click around (something like expert mpde) and let it use that disk completely. It will the formulate a new partitioning proposal. Check that, eventual change it, check again until you are satisfied. When in doubt, come back here for advice. Nothing will happen to that disk (or any other on the system) until you click OK (or Yes) on the last reconfirmation.
On 2011-10-02 18:36, chunnel wrote:
>
> Ok then. I have created an unformatted volume in Windows 7 of 120GB.
> How should I set that up for Linux installation?
Are you using “logical disk management” in windows? Or dynamic volumes?
They are not compatible with Linux, you can not install there.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logical_Disk_Manager
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Cheers / Saludos,
Carlos E. R.
(from 11.4 x86_64 “Celadon” at Telcontar)
I have seen it’s proposal and it will wipe clean the entire hard drive and overwrite the 2 partitions that have the Windows recovery on them. Additionally, I want a dual boot. I have been unable in expert mode to add a partition. It keeps telling me that a partition cannot be created here.
That is a bit difficult to interprete. I at least, would want to see what the installer shows you and what you do then. Saying “I have been unable in expert mode to add a partition.” is is bit vague and we can not see if you misinterpreted something, did something wrong or if there is a real problem.
As you can not copy/paste from the installer screen, we must fall back tou you writing down/typing as good as possible what is there or you making photo’s and posting them here.
As an afterthought, I might be wrong, but it coul dbe that your knowledge about partitions is not as good as you want it yourself 
Thus I point to SDB:Basics of partitions, filesystems, mount points - openSUSE
This may all be known by you since childhood. In that case I applogize for assessing your Unix/Linux knowledge wrongly.