I found several answers regarding that issue but I'd still like to get some confirmation on how to behave in this situation. I bought a quite recent laptop with a pre-installed Windows 8 on a 128Gb SSD primary hard-drive . As I use it as a working gear, I need to install Ubuntu on it. While launching the Ubuntu installer from a USB flash drive (after deactivating the quick start, the graphic acceleration etc. in the Bios) a finally get there but another problem showed up as Ubuntu installer does not detect my windows 8 partition. The "other option" can be selected but I'd rather not as I do not want to break my windows 8 partition (and I saw several posts on forums where the grub-repair or boot-repair or magic-boot-repair) failed. It clearly seems related to the GPT partition aspect.
Because of the GPT partition on my primary hard drive (where windows 8 is installed), Ubuntu installer fails to detect Windows 8. The only solution I found for now appears to be the removal of the GPT partition (using fixparts or gdisk). My problem is the following:
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If I do delete the GPT partition, will my windows 8 partition remain intact and be able to boot (since apparently the different BIOS can or cannot handle disk with or without GPT partition)
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I want to install Ubuntu on my other hard drive (which is a 1Tb classic hard drive) and let the primary hard drive only for windows 8 (which is a 128Gb SSD hard drive) so do I need to do so or should I just install Ubuntu by making my own partitions manually and then restore grub (using boot-repair for example) to go back to the classical dual-boot menu?
A long story short, the option I'd like to take is the "Install Ubuntu alongside windows 8" and no more questions asked and get everything working/launching without restoring or modifying the MBR or moving it to another hard-drive to preserve my neat and working windows partition but I am not sure this is actually possible.
Sorry for the long post and thank you in advance.
Best Answer
There's no such thing as a "GPT partition" in quite the sense that you seem to be suggesting. The GUID Partition Table (GPT) is a partition table -- that is, it's a data structure that defines partitions. The entire disk must be either GPT or something else, such as the older Master Boot Record (MBR) partition table. Thus, deleting the GPT data would delete all the partitions on the disk, which you probably don't want to do.
That said, some disks are actually MBR disks but they have leftover GPT data from an earlier partitioning of the disk. This situation can cause
parted, GParted, the Ubuntu installer, and some other tools to mistakenly believe that the disk is empty. The FixParts program that you mentioned can detect and correct this problem. I don't believe this is your problem, though; computers that ship with Windows 8 almost always use GPT, so unless you re-installed Windows using MBR, your disk should legitimately be GPT. You can test this by running FixParts on the disk; if it terminates with a message to the effect that the disk is a GPT disk, then that's what it is.I haven't researched the issue in detail, but the Ubuntu installer seems to have a bug that causes it to not provide the "install alongside" option for many computers that ship with Windows 8 pre-installed. I suspect that this is the issue you're seeing. Unfortunately, the only solution I know of is to use the "something else" option. Note that you'll almost certainly need to correctly identify your EFI System Partition (ESP) to the installer. It's a FAT32 partition, typically 100-1000MB in size, and you tell the installer to use it as an "EFI boot partition." (Why the developers chose too change "system" to "boot" is beyond me. Such changes just create confusion; but I digress....)