It's totally possible to dual-boot Windows and Ubuntu. Many people do it.
This assumes you want the Windows to have 250 GB on the SSD, and 500 GB on the HDD, and the same for Linux (although I do explain having one big shared partition on the HDD at the end, though).
If there are existing partitions on either drive that have data, make sure you back it up. We will be deleting the existing data, so if you don't, the data will be gone.
- Install Windows. In the Windows Installer, when you get to
Where do you want to install Windows?, first, delete any existing partitions (on the SSD), and then tell the Windows installer to install on the entire drive (yes, we will shrink it later). Finish Windows setup as normal.
- Install Ubuntu. In the Ubuntu installer, there will already be a few partitions for Windows, so we need to make Windows smaller to create space for Ubuntu. Follow these directions to manually make space for Linux. Note that this sometimes can cause you to lose data on the Windows partition, so don't put anything there that is important before you have finished installing both Windows and Ubuntu. After you've done those steps, continue with the Ubuntu installer.
- Make sure you can boot into both OS's.
- Now we have two options for the HDD... you can either create one big partition that both Ubuntu and Linux can write to, or two separate ones. I'll explain for two separate ones
- Boot into Windows. Open Partition Manager. On the HDD (double-check you've selected the right drive), delete any existing partitions (if any), and then create one partition that is 500 GB (and format it as NTFS). You can store large files in this for Windows.
- Boot into Ubuntu. Open the Linux partition manager (probably
gparted, if I remember correctly). There will be 500 GB of unallocated space on the HDD. In the unallocated space, create a 500 GB partition, and format it as ext4. This is where you will be able to store large files in Linux.
Bonus: Creating one big partition on the HDD instead of two smaller ones:
This assumes that you haven't yet done anything with the HDD, if you have, delete any partitions on it. This will delete any data on the HDD, though.
- (In Windows), create one 1TB partition on the HDD. Format it as NTFS. Now Windows can access it.
- I'm not sure if Ubuntu comes with NTFS read/write support (if someone knows, please edit this). If it does, you should just be able to mount the partition normally. You might run into issues, such it being read-only. Also, if you need NTFS write support, you might need to install
ntfs-3g with the command sudo apt-get install ntfs-3g Assuming all goes well, though, it should just work.
