Re: Partitioning hard drives...

In article <gemini.k2wbls006ac5c06e3.zed@xxxxxxxxxx>,
zed <zed@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Good afternoon from New Zealand.

I currently run LinuxMINT.

My computer has 2 x 200GB hard drives (one IDE and the other SATA), and I
seek advice as to the best way to partition them. Here is what I would like
to do.

IDE drive - partition as follows:
/boot/ext3 (would 100 MB be enough)
/root/ext3 (would 5 GB be enough)
/swap/ext3 (4 GB - I have 2GB RAM)
/home/ext3 (balance of HD)

Note: My present set up also has a partition named "extended". No idea where
it came from. Can someone explain, please?

SATA drive
/?? ext 3 (don't know what to name it but would like to use it to for all my
music files/image files, if possible)

There's been "holy wars" fought over more :)

My answer would be: "It Depends" ...

And a lot depends on your background - you're is fairly new, so you can
more or less do what you like with no "history" to bog you down. I've
been using unix and unix-like systems for just under 30 years now, so
part of how *I* partition a system is based on my own personal history.

Here's what I'd do...

1. Start from scratch.

/ 256MB
swap 2 x RAM
/usr 4 GB
/home Rest of disk. This is where you're going to store your music,
etc.

I'd partition both drives with the same number of sectors and use RAID-1
to mirror them.

Note: there's no /boot partition here. Why not? Well, the idea of a
/boot originates (I think) from the days when old PC BIOSes had a limit
to the number of cylinders they could access, so it was important to
make sure the linux kernel was inside that limit, so the idea of a small
/boot partition arose.

However, I have a separate /usr partition. Why? Because that's the way
it's always been (for me) In olden days you'd want to partition things
up to minimise "damage" caused should something go wrong - also disks
were small in those days, so it might not be uncommon for multiple
physical disks in a server rather than one big disks partitioned up.

I do it mostly from habit, but it's a trade-off with smaller disk
systems (not so much of an issue these days, but only a few years ago
disks were expensive)

And with 4 native partitions, root, swap, usr and /var (or /home) works
out OK, but the down-side of paritioning is that you have the potential
to waste disk space, so there is a temptation to just have one huge
partition...

Another consideration used to the be placement of the physical
partitions on the disks - although I suspect not many people care these
days... So you'll want swap in the middle of the disk with executables
either side to minimise head movement. But these days memory is cheap,
so not much excuse to not use it - but if you do have to swap, then
you'll want it as quick as possible.


Now for the questions:

(1) Are there any flaws in what I'm suggesting?

If it works for you, then use it.

(2) Can I partition both the IDE and SATA drives on one pass through the
installation process?
(3) Or would I have to use GParted to partition the SATA drive after
installation?

No idea - that depends on your distro.

It goes without saying that any alternative partitioning suggestions will be
more than welcome.

And a last question.

In subsequent installation of future versions of Linux, what do I do about
the separate Home partition? Do I just ignore it? Will the installation
procedure accept that or will it create another Home partition?

Again, it depends on your distro.

These questions must sound completely banal to those with more knowledge but
I don't want to get it wrong.

At the end of the day, it's entirely up to you - if this is a home
system, then off you go, and if it works, then you've been successfull!

If you don't want to mirror the disks, then an alternative might be as I
suggested above, but put one big parittion on the 2nd disk and mount
that as /home, but it's then hard to find use for the left over (190GB)
space on the first disk. You could create (eg) /var/space and use that.
You can combine partition with the software RAID drivers, but then if
one disk fails you lose the lot...

Gordon
.

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