Replaced my crashed HDD with a Seagate 2TB Sata (bought from a company who pulled it from a working computer, OS unknown) and did a fresh install of Windows 7. Windows shows 100MB boot partition (bootable NTFS) and 200GB Windows partition (NTFS), the rest is unallocated. Win7 Disk Management says the partitioning type is Master Boot Record. Win7 boots and runs fine. Ubuntu 11.10 Install procedes to Allocate Drive Space screen and should say This computer currently has Windows 7 on it. What would you like to do? Instead, it says something like Install doesn't detect any existing OS on this computer. When I click on Something else, the partition table shows only the unallocated space of 1.8TB.

Ubuntu Disk Utility says Partitioning: Master Boot Record, but GParted Live says Partition Table: gpt.

It was my original intention to have the Windows boot partition and application partition, then install Ubuntu 11.10 using boot, root, swap, and home partitions, and maybe another partition just for data (mostly photos). Currently, I would be happy if I could just get Ubuntu installed along with Win7.

I am aware of the MBR limits of 3 Primary partitions and 1 Extended partition. I suspect that my new HDD is partitioned for GPT and that is why Ubuntu can't see the Win7 installation. Am I on the right track? I was going to use Windows Disk Management to convert GPT to MBR but I only have the one drive on my AMD-64 mini-computer and it says I have to empty the drive of all partitions before I can access the Convert command. And I can't find any bootable software that would allow me to do that conversion.

Here is the result of sudo fdisk -l:

ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ sudo fdisk -l

WARNING: GPT (GUID Partition Table) detected on '/dev/sda'! The util fdisk doesn't support GPT. Use GNU Parted.


Disk /dev/sda: 2000.4 GB, 2000398934016 bytes
224 heads, 19 sectors/track, 918004 cylinders, total 3907029168 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0xd4a68c18

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1   *        2048      206847      102400    7  HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
/dev/sda2          206848   419637247   209715200    7  HPFS/NTFS/exFAT

ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ 

Keep in mind that I'm a definite newbie to screwing around with the inner workings of Ubuntu. I previously had Ubuntu 10.04 running with Vista and I don't remember even having to partition anything that wasn't automatic in the install.

Thanks for taking a look here. My Win7 is running fine but I miss my Ubuntu.