Comment 3 for bug 659106

This bug affects me too! It trashed a drive on my test PC, Windows reference installation, Ubuntu 9.10 reference installation, and a data backup partition (with the Windows partition images. Rats!). This was a *show stopper* for me.

It took forever to get my drive back together again, I am not geared up to install Windows, it was a real pain.
I was gobsmacked and spent the following two days doing systematic user level tests to verify that it was not in fact my fault.

My tests, which *repeatedly* verified this problem, on two different machines, were as follows:

Use a single hard drive PC with disposable drive contents.

I used an Ubuntu 10.10 Desktop Live CD (32 bit in my case) md5 checked and also CD self checked ok.

I created two partitions on the drive, one NTFS and one ext4. It did not make much difference ultimately however I deliberately made one partition bigger than the other, using a number of size conditions.

I began the install process, chose 'Install alongside other operating systems'.

Then I chose the option button 'Use Entire Partition'
(note: I carefully deliberately avoided 'the whole drive')

I could see that the partitioner had identified a partition, and it was shown in the GUI display in a valid way (eg /dev/sda5) and I could also see the resizing option slider, which I did not use.

I was confident that 'Use Entire Partition' meant what it said, I proceeded.

I then found that the whole drive was trashed, and the Ubuntu 10.10 new installation took over the WHOLE drive!