Hi, check out my dual-boot video I told you about earlier, you will need to download the Easy BCD Package from Softpedia. Doing it this way means that your Windows mbr will never get touched by GRUB - that gets installed to the partition marked '/' (root) - that is how I have it set up on my Rig. As for space that depends on what you are using it for - whether it be Windows or Zorin - if just compiling documents you could get away with 80 Gb for 7 but this is how I would do it (as per my video).
1. Have Windows take up the whole drive.
2. Go to My computer, right-click and select 'Manage'#
3. Go to 'disk management' to see the layout of your drives - right click your 'C' drive and select 'Properties' then go to the 'Tools' tab and schedule Windows to run 'Chkdsk' - check for errors and also fix problems should both be checked. It cannot run while windows is running but will run on next boot. Close all Windows, reboot and let 'chkdsk' do its thing.
4. After chkdsk has finished and rebooted to Windows, you then need to run the Defragment tool using the procedure stated at 3 above - click on 'Defragment' option and let Windows 7 analyse your disk - even if it is less than 10% I would still do it.
5. Now go to search bar in Windows 7 and enter 'repair disk' - this should bring back the link to create a 'Boot repair disk' for windows. Always useful to have should things go wrong!
6. If you want to backup your entire drive, use the free disk utility redo:
http://redobackup.org/7. Next select 'C' drive and right-click and select 'shrink volume' - let it do its thing - whatever free space is left is what you will use for Zorin:
a. Primary Partition - 30 Gb formatted to 'ext4' and marked '/'
b. Extended Partition - at END create 'swap area' - no file system to choose as it does this automatically, - make this the same size as you have RAM. (Memory)
c. At BEGINNING of extended partition, format it all to 'ext4' and mark as '/home'
Next choose where you want GRUB to be installed - this is at the bottom of the GParted tool which will appear AFTER you choose the 'other' installation method - be sure to make a note of the partition number that you put '/' on for EasyBCD entry in Windows. This should be at the start of the Primary Partition marked '/' - select the root bit of the partition above '/' - watch the video!!!
8. Reboot and you will see that Windows gets booted. Next install Easy BCD from Softpedia - will post later, and install it - the neat thing about Easy BCD is it automatically backs up your existing mbr before you do anything to it!
Am at end of lunch break now so bear with! (and watch my vid!)
