I agree with TezadaConnect about splitting the home directory to another partition, though he was great with the description it lacked how. And this is assuming you already found out how to repartition your drive since a basic windows install uses the entire drive unless specified.
In the installing screen that asks how you want to install you will have to choose something else. The wonderful option of along side my windows installation will put everything in one partition and if you have to reinstall you will have to set up all your programs again, a pain you don’t need.
In “something else” you will see the unallocated space you freed up in repartitioning below your windows installation. Select that and click change. The numbers at the top is the size in megabytes [MB]. You will want roughly 50 gigabytes[GB] (a healthy size with room for upgrades and software installation) which is 51,200 MB. Any number you choose multiply by 1024 to get the MB. We’re going to allocate most of what you have for the /home partition though. Check the format checkbox and choose ext4 (the file system, like NTFS but different). Your mount point, when clicked, will give you a list, choose /. Hit ok and wait a minute. When it reloads go to the unallocated space again and highlight it (left click), choose change. Leave the size as it is unless you plan on adding Journaling, swap partition, or a sharable data partition (a place to put data for access in both Linux and windows). Those are options you can grow into though. Select format, choose ext4 as well. Your mount point will be /home and hit ok.
[OPTIONAL]
If you choose a sharable data partition, use the rest of your unallocated space here. You’re format option will be NTFS. Your mount point does not have to be one of the listed. In the text box type
/ <name_of_mountpoint>
and then whatever you want to call it. If you want to mount it under /home you’ll have to type
/home/data
or whatever you call it.
From here click install and watch it fly. Unless you’re using a new computer or laptop you shouldn’t run into many issues.
Google/ Bing/ yahoo or whatever you’re search engine is, as well as this forum, will become your best friend figuring out how to finally take control of your computer. Enjoy and let us know how it goes.
