partitioning

[loewrida]

Hi I got Lucid Lynx and i want to partition the drive into two harddrives when i install, like with windows i would have my harddrive made into C and D and i would have windows on the C and all my movies and stuff on D. I saw some things about making the rest of your space to store files in the /home files but i when i log into ubuntu after installing it shows the /home folder inside the disk. I dont know if it makes sense but, i was wondering if u can have it the way windows does it so it looks like two harddives and which options to select when i'm paraitioning. i really want to change over to ubuntu i just wanna work this out first cause i dont know so much yet haha. thanks

[darkod]

The parts on the same hdd are called partitions. You are allowed to have 3 primary and 1 extended which can have up to 16 logical partitions inside.

But if you make 4 primary then the limit will be 4 and you can't create more.

Home is just a folder because you need to use Manual Partitioning, make a separate partition and mount it as /home during the install.

Since you want also separate partition for movies and stuff, you might consider separate /data partition. I personally haven't used it (just separate /home) but read around about it for more details.

So, the idea would be like (just a suggestion):

First sit down and make a plan how big you want each partition. For root usually 10GB is plenty if you have separate /home because then all personal data is saved there. After you made your plan, boot the installer and select Manual partitioning.

Create one primary partition with the size you want for root, select ext4 filesystem, mount point /.

Then create a logical partition with the size for /home, select ext4, mount point /home.
Create another logical with size for /data (if you decided to have one), mount point /data.
Create logical for swap, there is no mount point for that, just filesystem type swap area.

I suggested using logical partitions because in the above situation you would have one primary (root), and one extended holding 3 logical partitions (/home, /data and swap).

So you have used up 2 out of possible 4 (1 primary + 1 extended). You can still add primary partitions later if needed. If you create all 4 partitions from above as primary, that's the limit.

This is only one general suggestion. Work around depending what you want to achieve.

PS. Also a separate /home will allow you to make clean install of a future version over the current root, but keeping all your data and settings in /home (because only the root partition will be formatted and /home is totally different partition). That is one of the main benefits of separate /home.

[srs5694]

For the most part darkod has given good advice. I'd just like to make a few additional points....


The parts on the same hdd are called partitions. You are allowed to have 3 primary and 1 extended which can have up to 16 logical partitions inside.

Actually, the theoretical limit on the number of logical partitions is one less than half the number of sectors on the hard disk (about 2 billion on a 2 TiB disk -- but why anybody would need 2 billion 512-byte partitions is beyond me!). I'm not sure if there are more restrictive limits in the Linux kernel, but if there are, they're higher than 16. Here's evidence from a test disk, one which I've created 3 primary, 1 extended, and 18 logical partitions:



$ ls /dev/sdc*
/dev/sdc /dev/sdc12 /dev/sdc16 /dev/sdc2 /dev/sdc3 /dev/sdc7
/dev/sdc1 /dev/sdc13 /dev/sdc17 /dev/sdc20 /dev/sdc4 /dev/sdc8
/dev/sdc10 /dev/sdc14 /dev/sdc18 /dev/sdc21 /dev/sdc5 /dev/sdc9
/dev/sdc11 /dev/sdc15 /dev/sdc19 /dev/sdc22 /dev/sdc6
$ sudo fdisk -l /dev/sdc

Disk /dev/sdc: 16.2 GB, 16166944768 bytes
64 heads, 32 sectors/track, 15418 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 2048 * 512 = 1048576 bytes
Disk identifier: 0xd3119a0f

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdc1 1 501 513008 83 Linux
/dev/sdc2 502 1002 513024 83 Linux
/dev/sdc3 1003 1503 513024 83 Linux
/dev/sdc4 1504 15418 14248960 5 Extended
/dev/sdc5 1504 2004 513008 83 Linux
/dev/sdc6 2005 2505 513008 83 Linux
/dev/sdc7 2506 3006 513008 83 Linux
/dev/sdc8 3007 3507 513008 83 Linux
/dev/sdc9 3508 4008 513008 83 Linux
/dev/sdc10 4009 4509 513008 83 Linux
/dev/sdc11 4510 5010 513008 83 Linux
/dev/sdc12 5011 5511 513008 83 Linux
/dev/sdc13 5512 5989 489456 83 Linux
/dev/sdc14 5990 6490 513008 83 Linux
/dev/sdc15 6491 6991 513008 83 Linux
/dev/sdc16 6992 7492 513008 83 Linux
/dev/sdc17 7493 7993 513008 83 Linux
/dev/sdc18 7994 8494 513008 83 Linux
/dev/sdc19 8495 8995 513008 83 Linux
/dev/sdc20 8996 9496 513008 83 Linux
/dev/sdc21 9497 9997 513008 83 Linux
/dev/sdc22 9998 10498 513008 83 Linux



Since you want also separate partition for movies and stuff, you might consider separate /data partition. I personally haven't used it (just separate /home) but read around about it for more details.

If this is to be a Linux-only system, I'd just store the "movies and stuff" in /home, with /home being a separate partition. There are reasons to complicate matters by creating a separate partition for user data side from /home, but loewrida hasn't provided any. The most common is if this is to be a dual-boot system, in which case a shared-data partition for Linux and Windows (or OS X or FreeBSD or DOS or whatever) can be very helpful. Most often, the shared-data partition should use a native filesystem for the other OS (FAT, NTFS, HFS+, etc.), although ext2fs or ext3fs can sometimes be a good choice. The shared-data partition can be mounted in /home (even if it is itself a separate partition), in a user's subdirectory in /home (say, /home/loewrida), or elsewhere (say, /shared). The /home partition itself should use a Linux-native filesystem (ext3fs, ext4fs, XFS, JFS, ReiserFS, or Btrfs).


First sit down and make a plan how big you want each partition. For root usually 10GB is plenty if you have separate /home because then all personal data is saved there.

Appropriate sizes for root (/) range from about 5GB to 20GB for most modern desktop installations; however, it can go lower or higher in extreme cases. What's most appropriate depends on available disk space and how much software you want to install. (If you split off /usr, / can be significantly smaller.) I've got about 18GB in root (/) on one of my systems -- but it's packed with a lot of software and several kernel source trees.


Create one primary partition with the size you want for root, select ext4 filesystem, mount point /.

Then create a logical partition with the size for /home, select ext4, mount point /home.

This is certainly fine; however, Linux doesn't [i]require any primary partitions; it can install to either primary or logical partitions. This fact is most important if you're trying to dual-boot with a system that already has three primary partitions (as many computers ship from their manufacturers today).