
Partitioning Your Hard Drive During A Linux Install - askorkin
http://www.skorks.com/2009/08/partitioning-your-hard-drive-during-a-linux-install/
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zokier
This is how I would partition my disk:

1\. /boot - having a nice, working grub is always a plus

2\. /home - keep your data safe

3\. /data - name can be anything, but I would keep large media files (movies,
mp3's, .iso's etc separate from anything else). If you have dedicated disk for
such storage (like I do), it would be mounted here. FS could NTFS for Windows
compatibility.

4\. swap - This is optional, as modern Linuxes can use swap files too afaik.

5\. / - I don't see the point of having /var or /usr or anything system-
related on separate partitions in desktop machines.

Maybe /etc could be stored on a separate partition, as many files residing
there are useful to have when reinstalling, or to be shared between
installations.

btw /tmp is usually mounted as tmpfs which is practically ramdisk, so you
don't really need a partition for that.

~~~
chanux
Well I just have this feeling that the article is artificially voted up.

And no offense, but askorkin seems to be self promoting. 18 of his 21
submissions are from his own blog.

Note: It's completely OK to post your own content on HN.

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iigs
If you have a large hard drive and are not sure how you need it partitioned,
you can set up the entire disk as a Volume Group in LVM and give your
partition structure your best guess with relatively small volumes. Then when
you outgrow a volume, extend the volume ( <http://tldp.org/HOWTO/LVM-
HOWTO/extendlv.html> or use distribution GUI tools).

This is relatively uncommon in the Linux world, but it works very well. I
believe this is best practice on commercial UNIXes that have logical volume
support out of the box (such as AIX). It works particularly well for desktops
or servers where you may pre-configure the entire hard drive by default and
then add additional drives to the volume group at a later time.

~~~
jws
You will find that the filesystem barrier operations don't work on LVM except
in the very latest kernels. If you want integrity and performance you may not
wish to use LVM.

Background: The general case is hard. The LVM folk were holding out for the
general case but eventually yielded to practicality and coded the easy case
(single physical device). Extra work for them, but smiles for users.

------
TweedHeads
I usually don't partition my linux drives, but on windows it's a different
story.

I recommend you to at least have it partitioned in three.

One for windows C:, one for your data D:, one for linux E:

As soon as you install windows, reassign "MyDocuments" to D:

Whenever you have a windows crash, you just reinstall and keep your data safe.
You could also boot from linux and try some repairs or backups.

I've done that for every family member and friend, and couldn't be happier
everytime I get "that" call.

No matter how many times I wear that "I won't fix your computer" t-shirt, I
always get the call.

