Confusion about partition system in linux
 

Hi Everyone !
I have a HD of 20GB
I have created
100 Mb (boot)
1024 Mb (Swap)
&
10 Gb (/)
Now I want to create other partitions like (D & E in Windows).
Where my D & E like partition will create ???

Regards,
Tipu Pasha

Hello,

Linux is very different from Windows in various things. The way Linux handles disks and file systems is one of those differences. It's very important to know how this all works when you start out with Linux so have a look at this article, it describes it pretty well in easy to understand terms.

Kind regards,

Eric

Have you already created the additional partitions? If so, did you also format them and what filesystem(s) did you place on them?

In Linux, any partitions except those that host the system, must be mounted manually, or if you want to do it at boot, the partitions must be listed in /etc/fstab.

To manually mount a partition, enter the following command in a terminal window:

where fstype is the filesystem type on the device
something is the device containing the filesystem to mount, eg: For HD: /dev/sda1, /dev/sda2 etc, CDROM/ /dev/sr0 etc.
somewhere is the directory where you it mounted to. This must already exist.

If you need to do this one step at a time, please post the output from the following commands:

Depending your distro:
or
And the contents of you /etc/fstab file:

I really don't understand what that means at all, so whatever I write will have to ignore that:

Depends a bit on what you intend to do with the system; if you intend to have lots of (big) media files, then you would want more room for those, if you want to install lots of software that would point you in another direction.

The easiest way forward from where you are now would be to allocate the rest of the room on your hard disk for a home directory (where the personal files for all users are stored). If you want to install lots of software, you'd probably argue that this division of space gave a little too much to /home, and that you'd have been better if the 10 G '/' partition had been, say, 12 G.

To avoid this problem of having to 'pre-decide' how to split this space, then using a single partition for '/' (no separate /home partition) would have been better, but the separate '/home' partition does have other advantages when it comes to upgrade time.

With today's technology and today's expectations of what a computer can do, your 20G drive is on the slightly small side; do-able, but you may have to compromise in ways that you might not have to consider with a larger hard drive (or a second drive, of course...that size sounds like a PATA hard drive, and PATA hard drives ought to be available, secondhand, for very little money, these days).

With only 20GB you don't want to waste any space!

You don't need more than 10GB for the root partition. I've got that on this computer, but with quite a few programs installed, I'm only using 4.3BG. Ultimate Edition Linux installs 4 browsers and 6 video players (don't ask why) but only asks for 8GB.

It's a very good idea to have a /home partition, so that you can re-install Linux without affecting your personal files.

You need to set up partitions when you install (it can be a bit messy doing it later). So
/dev/sda1 used for /boot
/dev/sda2 used for /
/dev/sda3 used for /home
/dev/sda4 used for swap