Recommended partitioning sizes for dual boot

inigo

Having successfully built my first PC a few days ago, I would like to install linux in it. It will most probably be Ubuntu or Mint. I've successfully installed Red Hat and Fedora in the somewhat distant past without paying too much attention to what I was doing. I've tried the Ubuntu CD and everything seems to be working OK.

So this is what I wanted to do. The hard-drive is 500gb. I though I would install my old windows xp first in about 15 or 20gb, as I've seen it is a lot easier to do this first and just in case we need to go back to windows for something. I would then resize the partition and install linux. I also wanted to be able to leave most of the drive for all the user files (docs, music, movies, photos, etc.) in a partition accessible from both windows and linux. Considering I am no expert, how would you recommend I partition the drive in general and install linux in particular?

An Fear Aniar

XP won't be able to see inside your Linux filesystem, but Linux will be able to see inside your XP filesystem. So you could have the big storage partition as part of your XP system, and you can also use that partition from Linux as well.

Wait for other opinions though.
.

bman

It's different for everyone as everyone has different personal requirements.

But if it were me I'd go 20GB XP, 15GB /, 10GB /home and 455GB /media/common (or whatever you want to mount it as). These are only figures I would go with. If you think you'll be installing loads of software then go bigger with the OS areas. I find I rarely hit over 10GB full with my root Linux partition but always make it a big bigger just in case.

The common area should be NTFS or FAT32 (Linux support for NTFS is excellent now so I'd go with NTFS). This common area can be used for movies, music, books, etc. and all your OS specific stuff goes in your OS areas. The seperate /home partition is in case you want to re-install or install another Linux distro. Then you don't wipe your data and application settings which should be in /home.

inigo

Long time since I used linux!! I remember the difficulties of trying to even read NTFS from Red Hat!

bman, that's more or less what I had in mind. I just need some operational instructions though. Would I be able to do that while installing linux or should I do the partitions first, then install?

bman

Must be a while since you used Linux alright! You'll find it far simpler now. No messy text based installs any more.

You'll boot from the CD/DVD into live mode if you're using one of the mainstream distros. You can then install directly from live mode once you're happy with the distro and pretty sure you're hardware will play nice with it. As part of the install it'll scan your hard drive and show you what (Windows) is on there. You can then resize, delete, create, etc. partitions as you see fit (using a nice, simple to use, GUI environment) and, once you're happy, continue on with the rest of the install.

Forgot to mention in my previous post, you'll need a swap space. If you want hibernate functionality (or you're gonna run any intensive stuff) you'll have to make this swap space at least the size of your RAM. Take that out of your big common area .

Capt'n Midnight

An Fear Aniar wrote: »

XP won't be able to see inside your Linux filesystem, but Linux will be able to see inside your XP filesystem. So you could have the big storage partition as part of your XP system, and you can also use that partition from Linux as well.

Wait for other opinions though.
.

not true
unless you have an inode size bigger than 128 bytes which ubuntu 9 seems to do by default

for most other linux distros and partitions formatted with earlier ubuntu versions just use www.fs-driver.org/

Johnboy1951

Further suggestions ...

Create the partition for Win first at your preferred size. 20GB seems OK if it is not going to be your primary OS in the long term.
Install Win into that partition.
Boot into Win and ensure all is OK.

From the liveCD of whatever your preferred Linux distro is (Suggestions from me would be PCLOS, Mint or Mepis) create the partitions for your Linux install and then select to install to existing partitions.

I would suggest the following partitions
Swap ...... 1GB
/ ........... 15GB
/home ... 20GB

The Win, Swap, and / partitions should be Primary partitions. When those are created make the fourth an Extended Partition type, enclosing /home and a Data partition (Logical partitions) for the remainder of the space.

I have found that limiting the size of / and/or /home can impinge on their useability, especially if you work with large files or select to remaster your install. With smaller partitions it may be necessary to use the larger partition for temporary space. Easy to do on an app-by-app basis, but a bit of a hassle at times.

I use only ext filesystems for Data, but do not now have Win installed in any case. It should be noted that there are open Win drivers for accessing ext partitions which work well.

As previously pointed out, our needs differ so the setup will be different for a lot of users. I advise selecting the most future proof partitioning scheme ... it is hard to imagine what you might wish to do in a years time!

Good luck and have fun

Blowfish

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

for most other linux distros and partitions formatted with earlier ubuntu versions just use www.fs-driver.org/

The other thing to note about that is that it doesn't support LVM, which Red Hat based distro's tend to use by default.

inigo

Johnboy1951 wrote: »

I would suggest the following partitions
Swap ...... 1GB
/ ........... 15GB
/home ... 20GB

The Win, Swap, and / partitions should be Primary partitions. When those are created make the fourth an Extended Partition type, enclosing /home and a Data partition (Logical partitions) for the remainder of the space.

OK, windows first then linux. Windows will go on NTFS, linux on ext3 (swap, / and /home). I think I would rather have the data partition on NTFS too. This will probably be a silly question, but can I have two logical partitions with different file systems in the same extended partition? As I write it it sounds like I can't. If not, should I then create 4 primary partitions (swap, /, /home and data)?

Johnboy1951

inigo wrote: »

OK, windows first then linux. Windows will go on NTFS, linux on ext3 (swap, / and /home). I think I would rather have the data partition on NTFS too. This will probably be a silly question, but can I have two logical partitions with different file systems in the same extended partition? As I write it it sounds like I can't. If not, should I then create 4 primary partitions (swap, /, /home and data)?

What happened to the Win partition?

Yes you can have a mix of filesystems . ext & NTFS or whatever.

Just to point out ....... You are actually creating 4 primary partitions ....... the fourth one (Extended) is a Primary with the capability of being further subdivided into Logical Partitions.
The max number of Primary partitions you can have on a disk is 4.
Hence the three ordinary Primary partitions and the fourth an Extended (also taking up a Primary slot) Partition, enclosing Logical Partitions.

Yes most definitely Windows first, and check it is OK before installing Linux.

Regards.

inigo

I didn't forget about Win... It's the other partitions I am a little worried about (partitioning, formatting, mounting...). I will try to give a try today or tomorrow and see how it goes.

Johnboy1951

inigo wrote: »

I didn't forget about Win... It's the other partitions I am a little worried about (partitioning, formatting, mounting...). I will try to give a try today or tomorrow and see how it goes.

As I mentioned, you can only have 4 primary partitions and you had listed four, but no mention of Win

As you need more than a total of four partitions the fourth one must be Extended to allow for more partitions.

inigo

Johnboy, thanks for pointing that out. I am obviously learning a lot! So let me see if I got it right:

Primary 1

---

> Windows ---> 20GB ---> NTFS
Primary 2

---

> Swap

---

> 1GB ----> SWAP
Primary 3

---

> /

---

>15GB ---> Ext3
Primary 4/Extended
|---> Logical 1

---

> /home

---

> 20GB ---> Ext3
|---> Logical 2

---

> Data

---

> the rest ---> NTFS???

Should I create all the partitions from scratch with say Partition Magic, format them with the appropriate file system and then install Windows and linux?

Or should I partition 20GB, install Windows, then do the rest while installing Linux from the CD?

inigo

Or would this be better?

With Partition Magic:

Partition 1

---

> Windows ---> 20GB ----> NTFS
Partition 2

---

> Data

---

> rest

---

> NTFS
Partition 3

---

> Linux

---

> 36GB ---> Unformatted

Then install linux in Partition 3 according to the sizes above?

Johnboy1951

inigo wrote: »

Or would this be better?

With Partition Magic:

Partition 1

---

> Windows ---> 20GB ----> NTFS
Partition 2

---

> Data

---

> rest

---

> NTFS
Partition 3

---

> Linux

---

> 36GB ---> Unformatted

Then install linux in Partition 3 according to the sizes above?

I keep the OS partitions at the 'front' of the drive, so that any changes I make to the data area has no effect. So if I decide to chop up my larger data area the partition numbers on the other partitions do not change. For that reason the scheme above would not suit me.

You will likely get as many different views on the topic as people who read this thread. We all have somewhat different requirements and choose different means to fullfill them.

I would be inclined to create the Win partition first, then install Win, and ensure it boots OK.
After that whether you create the partitions from within the installer of the Linux of your choice or create them beforehand will not matter to the install. It may make it easier for you to follow if you have the partitions created beforehand.

Good luck with the project.

bman

If it were me, I wouldn't bother making a partition for Windows before you start. You're spending time doing something you don't need to.

Install Windows. Boot it. It works.

Boot your live Linux CD. Make sure it plays nice with your hardware.

Click the "Install me" icon. You'll be shown a graphical display of your hard drive and options for how you'd like to partition it. Specify your partitions. Click Next.

Config keyboard, config timezone, create users, etc. All done. It really is childs play these days.

inigo

An update on the situation and for the benefit (I hope) of beginners like me:

I created a 20GB NTFS partition with Partition Magic an installed Windows on it. I also installed some programmes and many windows updates and left it as if I was going to use this exclusively. I rebooted into this many times, installed motherboard drivers, etc. and no problems so far.

I then booted from the Linux Mint CD and created the following:

SWAP 1GB
/ 15GB ext3
/home 20GB ext3
data rest NTFS

This was pretty straight forward. It all seems to be working fine.

I am just not sure why I created a /home directory if I wanted to have all personal files on the data partition. Can I just merge /home and data into an NTFS partition, then use it from both windows and linux or would you recommend not to?

bman

inigo wrote: »

This was pretty straight forward. It all seems to be working fine.

Great. That's the main thing anyway.

inigo wrote: »

I am just not sure why I created a /home directory if I wanted to have all personal files on the data partition. Can I just merge /home and data into an NTFS partition, then use it from both windows and linux or would you recommend not to?

This is why I would recommend a 10GB /home. You're just taking space from your storage area.

The reason you want a home partition is for all your personal app settings in Linux and other Linux specific stuff that you might not want to wipe if reinstalling / updating your Linux OS. You don't really want that mixed into your common storage area as it could get messy. Also, better off not letting Windows have access to your /home partition at all in case something goes wrong on your Windows half of your computer. At least your Linux half is still safe.

inigo

Thanks bman. I don't think I will need the extra 10GB in the /home directory in the near future (probably within the hard-drive's life expectancy!) so I will probably just leave it the way it is.

Assuming I want to keep the same folder structure that comes with Mint under /home (pictures, video, documents and so on), would it then make sense to link or mount what's there already to a similar structure in the Data partition? I would be doing this for two different users. I'm not sure I understand all this correctly though.

bman

inigo wrote: »

Thanks bman. I don't think I will need the extra 10GB in the /home directory in the near future (probably within the hard-drive's life expectancy!) so I will probably just leave it the way it is.

Assuming I want to keep the same folder structure that comes with Mint under /home (pictures, video, documents and so on), would it then make sense to link or mount what's there already to a similar structure in the Data partition? I would be doing this for two different users. I'm not sure I understand all this correctly though.

I'd just create links myself as you have to mount the whole partition in a certain location. Links to the folders in your common area would be the easiest.

Those Documents, Pictures, Videos, etc. folders that you have are the same as having My Documents, My Pictures, My Music, etc. in Windows. They're only folders and can be deleted if you don't want / need them.