Consider using sda5 as /home and keeping 10.04 where it is on sda7. You
could resize sda7 to about 20Gbs and enlarge sda5 to absorb the freed space.
When working on partitions make sure to unmount them first and work from a
live CD if needed. Having a separate /home will make future upgrading and
re-installing a piece of cake.

is there any good tutorials on the web describing
this method?

I just finished this last weekend. Here is a link to a site that explains
how to have your /home partition moved to the new partition and
auto mounted.

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Partitioning/Home/Moving?action=print

Be advised that on the next last page you will be told to again edit the
fstab
to enter the new information. Before you do that unmount the /media/home
folder then proceed. Now the system may in fact be smart enough in the step
to mount -a to unmount /media/home and mount the /home partition under /home
but I would doubt it.

As for a Tutorial on doing the partitioning and all I don't know of one,
but a
google search might turn up something.

I down loaded the Gparted Live CD and burned one. I suppose you could do
all of it from the Ubuntu 10.04 Live CD but I liked the visual of the
Gparted
partitioning, very easy. Once I had my partitions created and written down
as to /dev/sda? numbers and I went ahead and labeled them while
partitioning.
Then ID'ing them was easy. Then I booted up the Ubuntu live CD and went with
the install. CAUTION: Use the custom install at the bottom of the
screen, other
wise it will want to format all of the disk. Under the custom install
you can
pick and choose the partitions you want to install to and format or not. For
instance you would not want to format the /home section after you had just
put all of your /home information there.

I took several days studying this before I did it but I am glad I went
ahead and
did it.

Since it is already partitioned into three areas
how about using one of them as your /home
and have it mounted at boot. I just did that
and it is sweet. I can reload 10.04 if I screw it
up like I just did and have all my files still available.
I isn't as straight forward and just doing an install
but not that much extra work, IMHO.

So does the grub have to be modified in any way?
Because I'll have to reformat sda5, right?
Right now grub has an entry for 9.10,
And I'll be removing that.......
Just wondering if there are any known
complications there.........

Grub will not need to be changed provide that you do not remove any
partitions and keep your root system on the same partition specified in
grub, sda7. I am assuming that 10.04 is the distribution on which grub is
based and not 9.10.

10.04 is the latest to be installed,
so I'm alright there?

And fstab file has to be modified to point to the new
/home partition?

Anything I might be missing?

No on you modifying grub in my case it was taken care of automatically.
Now in my case I wanted the windows to come up in a reboot so I had
to change it myself, but the configuration files have the instructions
within
them. Kinda convoluted but not unusual in Unix systems.

The easiest way is to format it as FAT32 or NTFS
and use it as a data disk shared between windows and ubuntu.

You must like defragging. FAT32 and NTFS are antiquated file systems. Linux
file systems are better. NTFS is 17 or 18 years old. There is no comparison.

I'm an exasperated Windows user considering switching to Ubuntu. Would you point
me to a comparison of the Linux files systems to which others are referring?

FAT32 is good for external hard drives cos every OS can read them, ubuntu
and windows and macs.

When you install Ubuntu (or any other Linux distro) it will format the
hard drive with the proper file system.

It will repartition your hard drive
leaving the windows working on a smaller NTFS partition
and make the 2 necessary partitions for Ubuntu.

Ubuntu will be able to read your windows data, mydocs etc.

Later on if you decide to stick with ubuntu you can resize the partitions
giving ubuntu more room.

See: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_file_systems

The current Linux file systems are EXT3 and EXT4 with the latter being
newer. There is also Reiser which I used to use, but since Hans Reiser is in
prison for murdering his wife it is at a dead end. ;) The upcoming FS for
Linux is Btrfs which is often pronounced Butter FS.

Generally speaking the advantage of Linux file systems over Windows file
systems is that they do not need defragmenting. This has to do with the way
Windows and Linux file systems add data. Linux starts at the middle and
leaves space for a file to grow and moves data around in the background
whereas Windows puts files at the beginning or in the smallest available
spot and leaves no space to grow. When a file is expanded then it adds the
added bits in another available spot, creating fragmentation, which slows
down the computer. Linux also can have longer file names with more
characters than FAT's 8 and 3. It does not need to truncate file names in
the same way that Windows sometimes does. You can have as many periods as
you want in a file name without it confusing the file system. Extensions in
Linux exist but do not take on the same significance. The file name does not
tell what type of file it is so much as the contents of the file and its
location. Any suffix that you choose to add is more often than not for your
convenience.

I don't want to suggest that NTFS is useless. It has been upgraded several
times and have stood the test of time, but sometimes you need to start over
and innovate rather than just improving something that was never that great
to begin with. Microsoft could make a better file system, but why should
they if users accept the old standbys? Not only is there an abundance of
choice in Linux, but they are willing to start from scratch and come up with
something that is better. As new file systems replace the old they exist
side by side for a long period of time and users can decide when and if to
transition to a newer file system. Any new file system can read the older
ones, but this of course does not necessarily work in reverse.

Btrfs is exciting. It is copy on write which allows for snapshots and roll
backs to a previous state. It is extremely fast and handles larger blocks of
data. It is still in development but is ready for daily use and is available
in the next Ubuntu and Fedora 13. I have never used it, but I have followed
its progress for a couple of years now. It and ZFS were touted as the
successors to EXT4 which was only a short term fill in until these were
developed further.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Btrfs

that is a good idea, but I already have another
hard drive for that.....

but westmi had both windows and ubuntu,
and windows cannot write to Linux file systems,
so I suggested a data partition which both OS's can use.

Yes he had both OS on the PC, but he didn't say windows needed to
read from the Ubuntu sections. So ext4 journaling file systems make
more sense.

Yes, absolutely correct.
I rarely use it, and my daily activities are done in Linux.

But, I'll do some more research, but it still isn't necessary
because I have a good backup plan in effect.

The only inconvenience I experience anymore is
configuring all my preferences into a new install.

And the 10.04 is good for, what? 4 years or so?
I'll worry about it when another LTS is released.