Question #3374 “How many partitions/size do you recommend?” : Questions : Ubuntu

How many partitions/size do you recommend?

Asked by Flope

Hi, my second question. I am new in linux.

I have windows xp and I just installed ubuntu in a hard drive 232GB.

My partitions (aprox.)

sda1 78 MB (FAT16 there is data inside. No idea what it is??
sda2 132GB NTFS windows xp
sda3 / 100GB
swap 1GB

Do you recommend me to create also /home, /boot, /usr, /var? How big?
Should I indicate that they are primary?

thank you very much

Question information

Language:
English Edit question
Status:
Solved
For:
Ubuntu Edit question
Assignee:
No assignee Edit question
Solved by:
Benjamin Goodger
Solved:
Last query:
Last reply:
Revision history for this message
Benjamin Goodger (goodgerster-deactivatedaccount) said :
#1

The 78MB vfat drive is likely a recovery thingie installed by your manufacturer, and depending on your level of paranoia you can probably chuck it.

I advise that you replace sda3 with 30gb of / and the remainder of /home, as you'll not use up more than 10gb in / while your home directory can extend limitlessly (it is a good idea to have /home on a separate partition, so that if the rest of it goes tits-up you can format it without losing /home.)

Hope this helps.

PS. Swap ought to be 2x your RAM in my experience.
PPS. Try to use FAT32 instead of NTFS where possible. Due to the fact that NTFS is very very proprietary, it's difficult and dangerous to get NTFS writing enabled in Linux.

Revision history for this message
jz (jz+) said :
#2

I would second the recommendation of avoiding NTFS where possible, however if you do need to share a partition between Linux and windows that supports files over 4 GB in size you can use the ntfs-3g driver to read/write NTFS from Linux or get an ext2 driver for Windows.

As for swap space it really depends on how much RAM you have, for example I have 2 GB of RAM and no swap partition. Lack of swap space has never been an issue.

For 1 GB of RAM I suggest 1 GB of swap, for anything less you would be wise to go with 2x RAM for swap.

Revision history for this message
Flope (flope004) said :
#3

Thank you very much for your advices.

I have 2 Gb of RAM and 1GB of swap.

Can I then generate a new partition after installation? In the same way that I did during the installation. So, It will be enought with two partitions more: /home and another FAT32 to share files.

I have a external hard drive which I could formate it in FAT32.

Revision history for this message
Best Benjamin Goodger (goodgerster-deactivatedaccount) said :
#4

You can indeed twiddle with your partitions after installing, by use of GParted ("sudo apt-get install gparted" or via synaptic) which conveniently happens to be the same thing used in the Desktop installer.

Revision history for this message
Flope (flope004) said :
#5

User confirmed that the request is solved.