I have two disks. One of them, 128 gb C: and almost completely full with windows installed. The other, 1Tb D:, is used for general purpose storage. I've created a partition of about 250 GB on the latter disk and wish to dual-boot ubuntu with windows (not replace). I've read both of these threads on manual partitioning and separate drive installation but neither of them seem to be answering my specific question. They seem to be explaining in great detail, but both work with an empty drive. I've read through this as well, and it seems to be going into great detail on the installation process, this as well does a good job at pointing out my question, but I'm still not sure how I do the partitioning. I'd appreciate some pictures.
The way I understand it you'd normally install ubuntu alongside windows on a separate partition, or install ubuntu on it's own disk altogether. In the case of installing on it's own disk, you'd create a new format table, and create the swap, root, EFI etc.. partitions. This is what I want to do, but instead of clearing the entire disk and dedicating it to linux, I've prepared a separate partition on my secondary disk, on which I want to download the bootloader without clearing the data I already have stored on the other partitions of said drive. At first I thought I could create a partition table on a U: partition, but in hindsight I see that it wouldn't make sense to split a virtual drive into more drives. Is it possible to isolate a linux installation to a specific partition? Can I do it without interfering with my other data?
This is how I've partitioned my drives, and this is how it appears during installation I want to isolate my linux installation to the U: partition (which has been manually named ubuntu)
Normally I wouldn't be afraid to play around and find out for myself, but in this case I'm scared of breaking either my windows installation or clearing the data I have on the drive. I'm rather inexperienced in terms of linux so I'd appreaciate a somewhat beginner friendly explanation. Thank you!
