nujinni, hard drive partition strategy

[MASONTX]

I have Ubuntu 10.04 as the only os on a 200GB hard drive. what is the best partitioning strategy for a home user? Should I have just one partition, or should I create multiple partitions?

[reed9]

I would recommend having a separate /home partition. That way, if you decide to a try a different distro, or want to upgrade with a clean install, you easily can without having to overwrite your personal files and settings.

My basic partition layout for home use is
/ = 10-15 GB
Swap = 2 times RAM up to 1 GB (I never use suspend features)
/home = the rest

With the exception of my netbook, which only has an 8 GB SSD drive. It does not get a separate /home and has /tmp mounted to a ramdisk.

[nujinini]

Generally, I would agree with the partitioning scheme of reed9!

But if I may share, I have also personally experienced the advantage of having a separate partition just in case I want to encrypt said partitions to keep my private files. Although they can also encrypt /home if they choose to. Some users I heard even have separate partitions for their multimedia files as well.

Since the HD is 200 G, it might be prudent to make a separate partition (20G) for back-up just in case the owner might have a need for temporary storage of files that needs to be saved.

In the end, it would be up to the user to decide on what partitioning scheme would work best for him or her. Any will do if it works for you. One of the facets of the beauty of this beast (linux)

Thanks guys!

nujinini
linux forums engineer

[nmset]

My two cents :

I have found it useful to keep a second 10-15 GB partition for installing the next release of the linux distro. I have always been deceived by upgrades. I usually install the latest release on the separate partition and by the time I have finished configuring the new release and installing any user programs, the previous release is always available and fully functional.

[MASONTX]

So putting together the different parts, 10-15 GB for home, 10-15 GB for next distro/trial distros, 20 GB for back up, 2 GB for swap, and the rest for data?

[nujinini]

So putting together the different parts, 10-15 GB for home, 10-15 GB for next distro/trial distros, 20 GB for back up, 2 GB for swap, and the rest for data?

Sounds good to me.

[elija]

I would do that slightly differently.

Based on a 200GB hard drive

20GB for main distro (including home directory)
20GB for second distro (including home directory)

All distros installed with only a / although, you may want to add a small swap drive depending on the memory you have.

The rest for data. The data partition would be mounted into a sub-directory of /home/ at boot time using fstab

There is no point backing up to the same physical drive so I would get an external drive and back up to that.

Just my $.0.02

[MASONTX]

As I understand it, the on drive backup partition wouldn't be for drive failure, but to back up to before doing a version update or major tinkering with your install. That way you don't lose your data if you have an OOPS moment.

[Bemk]

My usual setup on a Linux only box is 1 GB /boot, 20 GB /, 2x RAM (until 1 GB, then 1x RAM) and rest /home.

This 1 GB boot thing is something I did because of my multi boot systems. I have an external hard drive and some other PC's to do my backups.

Right now, though, I'm running 9 partitions, which is 3 per OS. (Gotta do something with 500 GB)