Re: Partitioning hard drives...

"zed" <zed@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:gemini.k2wbls006ac5c06e3.zed@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Good afternoon from New Zealand.


My brother-and-sister-in-law from NZ are staying with us at the moment, they
say it's getting pretty cold there, at least in Dunedin.

I currently run LinuxMINT.


Never used it myself.

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)
Yes, though it's a small partition in a large drive so even if you doubled
this size it wouldn't make much differenec overall.

/root/ext3 (would 5 GB be enough)
If you're using a graphical desktop under Xorg or Xfree86 it'd put at least
10GB in this.

/swap/ext3 (4 GB - I have 2GB RAM)
Double the RAM amount is probably overkill (and no longer necessary) but
it's a nice safe value.

/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?

Could it be an extended partition :-) i.e. one that will accept logical
partitions? When you add up the sizes of all your partitions does it come to
the size of the whole drive? Remember that to use an extended partition you
have to create logical partitions within it.

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)

I'd just call it "data" but then I have no imagination.

Now for the questions:

(1) Are there any flaws in what I'm suggesting?
Not that I can see. You may want to create another partition for /var as a
misbehaving program can fill your disk and it's better to fill /var than the
root partition (I have first have first-hand experience of this).

(2) Can I partition both the IDE and SATA drives on one pass through the
installation process?
Depend on Mint but you usually can.

(3) Or would I have to use GParted to partition the SATA drive after
installation?

Shouldn't think so but that's always an option, that or fdisk or half a
dozen other utilities.

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?

Just tell the installer that you already have a home partition and the you
_do not_ want it to format it. Then you can carry your home directories from
one distrbution to another. My current home directory has been through more
installations than I care to remember!

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

Not banal at all, just the kind of question you would ask when doing this
for the first time, but if you do get it wrong(*) there are usually ways to
change things later - this isn't Windows! (However messing about with the
size of partitions on a running system can be a PITA I will admit).

(*) - not sure that there is a wrong or right, whatever you choose you're
likely to want to change it in the future, LVM or EVMS2 can be useful here
but I'd keep things simple at the moment.

--
Geoff


.

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