partitioning - Shrink a partition in Windows 7

Following is the layout of the current partitions of my single hard drive viewed from Windows 7:.

As the figure shows, my current partitions are:

• C: has Windows 7 system files and my
  personal data;


• Q: for Lenovo recovery;


• SYSTEM_DRV: for Windows boot files;

I would like to create another partition D: for my
personal data, and dedicate C: for
Windows system files and applications only.

My current C: partition has already
been occupied with around 86 GB. If I
want to shrink C: for storing Windows
7 system files and applications to a
smaller size , such as 50 GB, must I
move out some files on C: to drop its
occupied size below 50 GB before I am
able to shrink C: to 50 GB in Windows
7? Or it is not necessary to move anything out.

After shrinking C:, I would like to make the rest free space as one extended partition, within which one logical partition is for D: and other logical partitions are for Ubuntu to be installed. So how to create the partitions?

Answer

Must I
move out some files on C: to drop its
occupied size below 50 GB before I am
able to shrink C: to 50 GB in Windows
7? Or it is not necessary to move
anything out.

You need to make the space available before you can shrink it to your required size, by moving the data elsewhere.

After shrinking C:, I would like to
make the rest free space as one
extended partition, within which one
logical partition is for D: and other
logical partitions are for Ubuntu to
be installed. So how to create the
partitions?

You'll have approximately 160GB left over. So I'd go with rougly 80GB for the rest of your data in a D: drive, and then let Ubuntu utilise the rest of the space as it sees fit.

The installer decides based on what is available so you don't have to do very much as long as there's enough space.