Robh,

You don't need to format using Windows. Just download a Live CD of the version you want (I use Ubuntu) and boot-up from that. The Live CD will have a partitioning program (in Ubuntu this is GParted and is found under "Administration" on the menu bar.) Use this program to delete the present partition and then to create new ones. Gparted will format very quickly by comparison to Windows.

I suggest the following (I have mentioned this in Linux threads already, but this time I'll be a little more explicit) ...

Make three partitions: one @ 20 GB, one @ 2 GB, the last one using all remaining space. I format these to ext3 as there seems to be some dislike of ext4 at the moment in the Linux community.

When you installing,
*set the flag for the 20 GB partition to /
*set the flag for the 2 GB parition to "swap"
*set the flag for the remaining, largest partition to /home

The above are Ubuntu flags but I imagine they are pretty much generic.

The reason I do this is because the root directory (/) is where all system files are installed. Whenever I install Ubuntu, the system area (/) needs to be formatted. The /home directory never needs formatting. I never upgrade because I've had problems whenever I've done that. I always install new versions. Because I have the two above directories, though, all my files, email settings, bookmarks, etc., remain intact since they are stored in the /home directory and it's only / that I need to format.

The above has worked real well for me. I've lost nothing and have installed about dozen times now. In fact, because of my set-up, I often simply reinstall if I do something wrong and create a problem rather than try to solve the problem (I'm lazy!).

Just an idea
Noel

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