Need a partitioning recommendation

corblimey

I have this machine that has a 200gig h/d. 20gig is already partitioned off, leaving 180, of which I have about 120gig devoted to 'media' and 30gig assigned to Win XP, various apps and games. I want to install Ubuntu on this machine and make the media available. So I think it's probably best to make an Ext3 partition which contains all these files. How exactly would I do this? My brain melts a little when I try to map it out.

I can partition 30gig right now for Ubuntu, but I can't make a partition big enough to hold the media files while the media files are in the way. Do I need to buy an external h/d and move them there temporarily, delete them from here, partition and move back? Seems like a waste of a h/d?

ethernet

OK, let's see (need to visualise for myself ):

• 20 GB partition
• 120 GB (media)
• 30 GB (XP, games)

--> 50 GB free, yes?

Create an extended partition. Inside this, create logical partitions:

• a root partition (denoted by / -- the root of the file system, somewhat like C:\ in Windows)
• a swap partition (anyway between 512 MB and 2 GB is plenty for a desktop)
• optionally, a /home partition for Linux-specified files and/or settings. This makes future upgrades easier as your settings in various programs can be inherited without deleting anything on this partition. This partition wouldn't need to be excessively big if you're storing files in your media partition. Additionally, Linux can write to NTFS partitions using the ntfs-3g driver (supported out-of-the-box in most distros now).

corblimey

Well 30gig free, and this doesn't address the issue of getting all the media onto a shared (pref Ext3) partition.

ethernet

What format is the partition containing your media now? You can get away without having it as a common or so-called 'shared' partition. That solution came about when Linux could write to FAT16/32 and not NTFS. NTFS read support isn't a problem at all and now, neither is write, as mentioned above.

So your Linux install in the logical partitions will be able to read your media partition and write without any problems. You will also be able to access and edit any files on your XP partition in this way.

corblimey

Technically, that's true (although I've read in places that Ext3 is more 'efficient' than FAT or NTFS - takes up less 'chunks' of memory?). But either way, my main problem I guess is getting the 120gig of media into a partition on its own - I want to do this anyway for a number of reasons and the installation of Ubuntu would seem to be the right time to do it.

But I can't see how I could create a partition big enough to hold everything without being able to make that much room on my hard drive. Am I right?

ethernet

With 30 GB free, no, I don't see how you could get around that unless you resort to a lot of DVDs and DL DVDs

corblimey

That's what I thought, just wanted to be sure there was no way of creating partitions bigger than the free space available.

GreenHell

Had a similiar setup when I switched from vista to ubuntu. No problems accessing the nfts partition was dead handy actually.