How to set up my HDD

[phantommaggot]

OK
so here i go.
i just got my new drive.
unfortunatly it was an AAK 7200.10 (seagate) but im gonna just keep it i guess.
(seagate seems to know about the problem with aak drives and have developed aam to replace it. but as of now they wont send out the new firmware to users and the only place i can find it it only has it for the 500 GB drive.)

its a 320 gb drive and i gave about 50 GB total to windows for games and such.
(left me about 250 gb blank)

i plan to install linux mint since i like how it works, looks, feels and all that.
as of now mint has a memory leak, (i still have it installed on my old drive) and i dont really care much for that. so for the mean time i thought about using something else till the new version of mint comes out.

i was thinking ubuntu or xubuntu or something along those lines..

so i want to be able to go back to linux mint and not loose my files from home

i realize i can make a partition for /home and that it should live throu a new install and i may even be able to share it between distros if i run more than one linux. does that mean that i make it a primary partition?

i get really lost using the primary extended thing

if i make an extended partition does it survive a reinstall. i want to use linux for everything short of playing games. but to constantly be updating and loosing things would be a PITA.

also.
id really REALLY like to be able to share a smaller partition between windows and linux. mostly for bittorrent stuff
like have azureus on linux and on windows and keep the folder for torrents and downloads on a 50 GB partition somewhere, maybe on a different drive (i have 3 drives total. a 250 that is PACKED (600 ish mb free), a 160 that is only a sata 1.5 but after i save all my files on it and re format it i should have a good amount of space there too.

so would making a small NTFS partition work and use mintdisk to read and write from it? this way while im playing something like starcraft or other non internet games i can still be seeding and downloading.

anyways
thanks for anything
-J

[devils casper]

You can share existing home partition but make sure to create different user during Ubuntu Installation. If Mint and Ubuntu have different package versions then you will face version conflict problems. Creating different user will be good choice.
There is no need to create Primary Partition for /home. Didn't you create separate /home partition during Mint installation?
I dont know if Mint support NTFS read/write access out of box. In case it doesn't, you can enable it by installing ntfs-3g package easily.
Boot up Mint and execute this

sudo fdisk -l
df -h

Lets check your disk's Partition Structure.

[phantommaggot]

as of now i dont have any linux installed on this drive.
im still getting windows back to the way i want it..
to boot up linux ill have to swap out to the 160 drive for now
i installed mint on it to make sure thats what i wanted to stick with.

and im pretty sure it is... if they fix the memory leak. NOW.. i could boot it up from the DVD if thats what you mean.. but right now i just have xp and about 250GB free space on the new drive.

but mint comes with mint disk which gives full access to NTFS drives. i just haven't really played with it yet to see how well it works. im gonna do that tomorrow night

the thing i want to do with /home is when i install a fresh copy of linux on here id like to make the seperate /home partition so when i upgrade to the next version (which should fix the memory leak) ill still have all my stuff in the home folder. should that be in a extended partition or not like, if i reinstalled mint onto an extended partion with /home in it would i get to keep home.

ubuntu is only a second choice if i dont feel like dealing with a memory leak. id replace it as soon as that leak was fixed.

[devils casper]

to boot up linux ill have to swap out to the 160 drive for now
i installed mint on it to make sure thats what i wanted to stick with.

You can setup Two HD dual boot easily. You have to edit menu.lst file only.

the thing i want to do with /home is when i install a fresh copy of linux on here id like to make the seperate /home partition so when i upgrade to the next version (which should fix the memory leak) ill still have all my stuff in the home folder. should that be in a extended partition or not like, if i reinstalled mint onto an extended partion with /home in it would i get to keep home.

If you are concerned about Upgrade only then there is no need to create separate /home partition. Upgrade just update packages and doesn't do anything with user data.
Creating separate /home is a good choice though. You can share same /home partition in multiple distros like SWAP partition.
This partition structure of my test machine:

/dev/sda1 NTFS Windows XP
/dev/sda2 FAT32 Data Storage
/dev/sda3 FAT32 Fun Stuff
/dev/sda4 Extended Partition
...../dev/sda5 SWAP
...../dev/sda6 /home
...../dev/sda7 Ubuntu, sda8 Fedora, sda9 Debian and list goes on.....

[devils casper]

ubuntu is only a second choice if i dont feel like dealing with a memory leak. id replace it as soon as that leak was fixed.

What do you mean by Memory Leak?

[phantommaggot]

memory leak, as in it will completely fill the memory
its a known problem with mint menu apparently and should be fixed with the next release.

i dont plan to dual boot with seperate drives, id like to keep everything on the same drive and clear the operating system stuff off the 160 and use it for storage.

so i could make one huge extended partition and set it up like

/dev/sda1 NTFS Windows XP
/dev/sda2 Extended Partition
...../dev/sda3 SWAP
...../dev/sda4 Mint (how big should i make this partition? ill install UT and whatever else i can on here, does that stuff go to /home?)
...../dev/sda5 /home

and be able to resize /home enough to put like SUSE on it later.

set up the 160 like

dev/sdb1 NTFS azureus
dev/sdb2 ext3 Storage

as of now i have my drives set up as such
160 GB seagate
---99GB NTFS windows 1.4GB free
---40GB NTFS storage 1.5GB free
---10GB EXT3 Mint 5.0GB free
---1GB SWAP

250GB
---232GB NTFS storage 512MB free

and the 320
---50GB NTFS XP
---250 unparted

ill free up about 30 GB on the 160 when i get rid of all the operating system nonsence and ill be left with just the files i want to keep.

id like to move those over to the 320 long enough to reformat the 160 and move everything back.

then id probably go along and pick out the things i used the most from those drives and put them in my home folder

im supposed to be interviewing for a new job here soon. and it should pay pretty well.
im gonna try to save up and raid a couple 750GBs together and replace the 250 and 160 with those. (why i got the 7200.10 as an OS drive hopefully theyll release a good firmware update for it.) i just gotta hold out till then.
bleh lol..

**
ill be moving all my music from the 250 drive to the home folder in linux on the 320 thats about 21GB. not alot but itll free some space there tool .

[phantommaggot]

and one more thing id like to add/ask

when i do my partitioning can i use ext3 for the OS stuff and XFS for the home folder?