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FAQ: How to Partition

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    FAQ: How to Partition

    Partition recommendations

    RecommendSeparateHome tells:

    Having a separate partition for /home is always a good idea, since it lets you reinstall your system without losing valuable personal data. This can be especially useful in a distro like Ubuntu, where users have the chance to upgrade their install quite often (every six months) and might want to perform a clean install to avoid potential problems. Nevertheless, and while some other distros out there already do this automatically, Ubuntu doesn't.
    • if the hard drive is bigger than 20 GB, and it's a Ubuntu-only installation, 10 GB should go to / and the rest should go to /home
    • If the hard drive is between 10 GB and 20 GB, and it's a Ubuntu-only installation, 5 GB should go to / and the rest to /home
    • if the hard drive is less than 10 GB, there should not be a separate /home partition
    • If the hard drive is bigger than 40 GB and a dual-boot, 10 GB should go to / and the rest to /home
    • If the hard drive is between 30 GB and 40 GB and a dual-boot, 5 GB should go to / and the rest to /home
    • If the hard drive is less than 30 GB and a dual-boot, there should be no separate /home partition.



    SWAP

    Rule of thumb from Swap Partition FAQ
    How much swap do I need?
    - If you have n Mb of ram, you need between n and 2*n Mb of swap.
    - If you have a disk big enough, just put 2*n Mb swap.
    Even more of swapping: How much swapspace does one realyy need? and All about Linux swap space.


    More than four partitions

    Linux Partition HOWTO tells:

    3.3. Primary Partitions
    The number of partitions on an Intel-based system was limited from the very beginning: The original partition table was installed as part of the boot sector and held space for only four partition entries. These partitions are now called primary partitions.

    3.4. Logical Partitions

    One primary partition of a hard drive may be subpartitioned. These are logical partitions. This effectively allows us to skirt the historical four partition limitation.

    The primary partition used to house the logical partitions is called an extended partition and it has its own file system type (0x05). Unlike primary partitions, logical partitions must be contiguous. Each logical partition contains a pointer to the next logical partition, which implies that the number of logical partitions is unlimited. However, linux imposes limits on the total number of any type of partition on a drive, so this effectively limits the number of logical partitions. This is at most 15 partitions total on an SCSI disk and 63 total on an IDE disk.


    Partition tools

    Graphical tools for partitioning:

    Gnome Partition Editor
    GParted is an industrial-strength package for creating, destroying, resizing, moving, checking and copying partitions, and the filesystems on them. This is useful for creating space for new operating systems, reorganizing disk usage, copying data residing on hard disks and mirroring one partition with another (disk imaging).
    GPARTED-LiveCD
    The power and simplicity of GParted on a biz-card size LiveCD.

    QtParted
    QTParted is a Partition Magic clone written in C++ using the Qt toolkit.

    KDE Partition Manager
    Description:
    This software allows you to manage your disks, partitions and file systems: Create, resize, delete, copy, backup and restore partitions with a large number of supported file systems (ext2/3, reiserfs, NTFS, FAT32 and more).
    Kubuntu package name: partitionmanager (Jaunty)


    Commandline

    man fdisk
    FDISK(8) Linux Programmer’s Manual FDISK(8)

    NAME
    fdisk - Partition table manipulator for Linux

    SYNOPSIS
    fdisk [-u] [-b sectorsize] [-C cyls] [-H heads] [-S sects] device

    fdisk -l [-u] [device ...]

    fdisk -s partition ...

    fdisk -v

    DESCRIPTION
    Hard disks can be divided into one or more logical disks called parti‐
    tions. This division is described in the partition table found in sec‐
    tor 0 of the disk.

    In the BSD world one talks about ‘disk slices’ and a ‘disklabel’.

    Linux needs at least one partition, namely for its root file system.
    It can use swap files and/or swap partitions, but the latter are more...
    man mkfs.ext3
    MKE2FS(8) MKE2FS(8)

    NAME
    mke2fs - create an ext2/ext3 filesystem

    SYNOPSIS
    mke2fs [ -c | -l filename ] [ -b block-size ] [ -f fragment-size ] [ -g
    blocks-per-group ] [ -i bytes-per-inode ] [ -I inode-size ] [ -j ] [ -J
    journal-options ] [ -N number-of-inodes ] [ -n ] [ -m reserved-blocks-
    percentage ] [ -o creator-os ] [ -O feature[,...] ] [ -q ] [ -r fs-
    revision-level ] [ -E extended-options ] [ -v ] [ -F ] [ -L volume-
    label ] [ -M last-mounted-directory ] [ -S ] [ -T filesystem-type ] [
    -V ] device [ blocks-count ]

    mke2fs -O journal_dev [ -b block-size ] [ -L volume-label ] [ -n ] [ -q
    ] [ -v ] external-journal [ blocks-count ]

    DESCRIPTION
    mke2fs is used to create an ext2/ext3 filesystem (usually in a disk
    partition). device is the special file corresponding to the device
    (e.g /dev/hdXX). blocks-count is the number of blocks on the device.
    If omitted, mke2fs automagically figures the file system size. If
    called as mkfs.ext3 a journal is created as if the -j option was speci‐

    Examples

    Create a separate home partition in Ubuntu
    Introduction

    This guide is for creating a separate /home partition if you already installed Ubuntu without a /home partition (i.e., /home is just a folder inside your / partition).

    Having a separate /home partition makes it easier for you to reinstall Ubuntu while preserving your personal files and settings. This is a matter of convenience but is not foolproof. You should still regularly back up your data

    Partitioning Windows and Ubuntu
    One of the most frequently asked questions about installing Ubuntu is "How should I partition my drive?"...
    ...
    The focus of this tutorial is not on how to create the partitions (resizing, etc.) but on planning—what the desirable outcome is...

    Links:

    Create a separate home partition in Ubuntu
    http://www.psychocats.net/ubuntu/separatehome

    Partitioning Windows and Ubuntu
    http://www.psychocats.net/ubuntu/partitioning

    Installing a Dual-Boot with Windows and Ubuntu
    http://www.psychocats.net/ubuntu/installing

    Illustrated Dual Boot Site
    http://users.bigpond.net.au/hermanzone/

    Topic: New to Kubuntu / Advice and Tips would be a great help...
    http://kubuntuforums.net/forums/inde...opic=3090058.0

    Topic: What size Partitions
    http://kubuntuforums.net/forums/inde...opic=3090506.0

    Topic: No /swap
    http://kubuntuforums.net/forums/inde...opic=3087561.0

    Topic: Changing drives.
    http://kubuntuforums.net/forums/inde...opic=3089883.0

    RecommendSeparateHome
    https://wiki.ubuntu.com/RecommendSeparateHome

    Swap Partition FAQ
    https://help.ubuntu.com/community/SwapFaq

    Linux Partition HOWTO
    http://tldp.org/HOWTO/Partition/

    Gnome Partition Editor
    http://gparted.sourceforge.net/

    QtParted
    http://qtparted.sourceforge.net/
    Before you edit, BACKUP !

    Why there are dead links ?
    1. Thread: Please explain how to access old kubuntu forum posts
    2. Thread: Lost Information

    #2
    Re: FAQ: How to Partition

    List of partition identifiers for PCs

    Partition types:

    "Below a list of the known partition IDs (system indicators) of the various operating systems, file systems, boot managers, etc. . . . "

    http://www.win.tue.nl/~aeb/partition...n_types-1.html
    An intellectual says a simple thing in a hard way. An artist says a hard thing in a simple way. Charles Bukowski

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