Ubuntu

Hi all- I'm getting ready to install Ubuntu onto my Sony Vaio laptop and had a few questions for which I have not yet found the answer.

1)Should I partition my hdd myself (including a swap partition) in Windows or should I do this when installing Ubuntu? When I do partition, since I have over 400GBs free on my drive, should I divide those pretty much in two (200 GB of free space for Windows, on top of the 60GB it is already using, and 200GB for Ubuntu), or should I partition the drive in 3, so that in case I want to install a third OS on there (like another Linux distro, Kubuntu or somethnig), I will have that partition ready to go?

2)Will updating Windows override GRUB, and if so, what can I do about this?

3)Should I burn the ISO on a DVD/CD or just put in on a USB drive? If I burn, should I use a third party program like ImgBurnr or use the stock burner that comes with Win 7? Lastly, the Win 7 burner asks me what type of format I want the disc to be burned as: Live File System or Mastered. I read up on the differences, and it appears that the Live File System "only works on Windows XP or later versions of Windows" so does this mean I cannot boot from it if it is Live File as opposed to Mastered?

Any help is greatly appreciated.

maybe you should try to install ubuntu in a virtual machine... it is a lot safer then partitioning your harddrive and you can play around with ubuntu to get used to it.

Do you mean downloading something like VirtualBox to Windows, then running it, and installing Ubuntu there? I am pretty sure I am going to keep Ubuntu, plus I don't comprehend yet how virtualization works, so I don't think I would be comfortable doing it this way. I don't think I will damage my system with partitioning- I just want to know which way to go as far as choosing to partition the disk via Windows or via the Ubuntu install menu.