Disk partitioning takes too long to start

[Raj Kiran Grandhi]

While installing ubuntu (7.10) after booting from the live cd, the installer scans existing partitions in order to find free space. However, on a machine with several/large partitions, this scanning takes a lot of time (several minutes). After scanning, the user is asked whether to resize existing partitions or to manually specify the partitions. It would be better if the ntfsresize scans are done if and only if the user asks to resize existing partitions.

Also, if I select some option and decide to go back, the scans of ntfs partitions are repeated. Caching the results of the earlier scan should eliminate the need for this repetition.

Also, when choosing to manually specify the partitions, the installer insists on "scanning disks" after every operation. That too takes a long time depending on the number of partitions in the system.

[Colin Watson (cjwatson)]

Thanks for your report. This is essentially also bug 89357.