I've seen systems set up with the hard disk(s) set up in many different partitions. For example, a separate partition being used for /usr, /tmp, /usr/local, ....

I've also seen one partition used.

Personally, I prefer the single partition method. What sort of problems might I encounter with this approach? ...Why would I want separate partitions?

Opinions?

Thanks.

Dan

It depends on what you are doing. For example, on a server, /var can fill up with a lot of log messages so I would use a seperate /var partition so / doesn't get filled up as that can bring the server down. In a multiuser environment, I might make a seperate /home partition just to ease certain backup and maintainance tasks. But for a single user not running a server, I see nothing wrong with having just a root and a swap partition.

At minimum, have a separate /home partition. Personally, I use about 4 separate ones for my multi-user (family) PC, but that only because I like to set it up like a 'professional' workstation.

The most important reason for maintaining /home separately is that in case of a hard drive failure, when you don't have a fresh backup (never happen, right?), there is a good chance that your /home partition will still be readable, and therefore rescuable. It's easy enough to reinstall an OS ... data? not so easy. I do the same thing on my Windows machines. 12 gigs or so for OS and programs, and a separate partition for data. Has saved my butt 3 or 4 times over the years.