I recently installed Ubuntu 12.04, which I had been booting from a usb key, as a dual-boot on my machine running Windows 7. From what I had read online while researching, I was prepared to have to shrink the Windows partition and all that. But I never had to - it really was just a few clicks here and there and it was installed. I'm still pretty confused about it, but whatever, it worked, and the two peacefully coexist on my machine, and I have broken things to fix before I worry about fixing unbroken things.

So yesterday I got it in my head to look at my partitions (I was considering making an all new partition to install the Windows 8 Release Preview). What I saw confused me. Here's a screenshot of the disk utility. At this moment, there is nothing connected to my computer, and nothing in any of the optical drives/ports/card readers/etc.

Can you help me figure out what's going on here?
Don's Machine is, I believe, my Windows partition - that's the name I assigned my machine from Windows Explorer.
PQSERVICE is from what I can find online also Windows, but having to do with backup.
And SYSTEM REQUIRED, if I browse it in Ubuntu, is definitely something to do with booting, and I believe it is also Windows'. According to the sizes shown, those three together should use up my 500 GB HD.

Then further down, as a "peripheral device", it lists that 31 GB disk. This is obviously my Ubuntu (Model:Linux Loop:root.disk), but why is it showing up as a peripheral?

So, to sum up those questions and to add some more random ones I had:

• Why is Ubuntu showing up as a peripheral device?
• If the Windows sections take up all 500 GB, where does Ubuntu live?
• If I renamed the disk partitions, would my life become a nightmare (seriously - can I safely rename them)?
• Why didn't I have to resize the Windows partition in the first place?
• Would giving Ubuntu more space improve its performance (it hangs alot)?
• Is it possible to have a partition for each OS (Windows 7 & 8, Ubuntu), a partition for files, and a separate partition for backups? Is this towards the good or bad idea end of the spectrum?

@Elfy, would that explain why it keeps hanging? I guess I'll backup my files, rip it out, and reinstall it correctly later on today.