Best way to partition my hard drive
 

Ok I have a 111 GB hard drive(I have a recovery partition which hogs up the rest). And I want to partition this in order to dual boot with Linux. I was considering the different ways I could do this(I have way to much room to work with). Here is what I am thinking of:

40 GB for Windows(I'm going to use Windows for a lot of gaming and using Visual Studio.NET so I am going to need a lot of room for applications).

30 GB for Linux(I will be using Linux for everyday use, and heavy programming and development).

5 GB Shared Data-FAT32 Partition(I will be using this for data I need Linux and Windows to share).

20 GB Data storage for Linux(for Linux files and backups)

15 GB Data storage for Windows(for Windows files and backups)

I want to set it up so that my data is separate from the system files that way I can change distros without any loss of data.

Does this sound good or does anyone have any ideas or advice for me to think about.

Sounds like you're on the right track - if you're planning to share data between Windows and Linux, it's good to have a separate partition for that (probably with Fat32 or something similar on it, which both Windows and Linux can use).

If you're unsure about how much you will need for each OS, my advice would be to allocate a conservative amount for the basics, and leave the rest unallocated until you know what you will need it for. In Windows, this is unfortunately a little bit tricky (since you can't just have C:\Program Files be on an arbitrary partition), but for Linux, if you have 5GB allocated and decide you need more space in /home or whatever, you can just make a new, bigger partition for it and recycle the old one.

I don't know what kind of stuff you plan to install in Linux, but 30GB just for applications and OS-related stuff seems like a lot; unless you intend to install a huge amount of software, 10GB will probably be more than adequate. You can always add more space later (from your unallocated space); it's not as easy to reallocate partitions that are alread in use, though.

I am planning to have a partition for shared data. Its going to be 5 GB. Ok so the next plan is:

15 GB for Linux(I only expect to use around 10 but I want to be safe)

30 GB for Windows(I am not planning to install another OS on this partition so I'm going to keep it big)

20 GB of Linux data(data files and other stuff that will be kept when changing distros)

20 GB of Windows data(data and backups Windows will use)

5 GB of shared data

That leaves around 20 GB of unallocated space to stick werever I will need it at a later time.

The question is how will I do this? Is there a program(other than partition magic which I have a bad history with) that I can use to resize partitions without losing data? Or will it be a better Idea to just allocate that space were it is going to be mostly needed.

The other thing I have considered is having 2 chunks for the system files and one big FAT32 partition for data:

15 GB for Linux System

30 GB for Windows

the rest will be the FAT 32 Partition for data.

how does this sound?

Re: Best way to partition my hard drive
 

You'll want to make a partition for /home - basically that's your linux personal files partition. When you change distro's simply do not erase it, but mount it again as /home in the new distro.

Yes I know that but how big should the partitions be.

Some distro's tell you the total size of the packages you're going to install during installation, or they have a readme which tells you how much spave they're going to need. A standard installation should have enough space with 2-3 Gb, but a very complete one might need up to 8. If you make seperate partition for /usr (programs files) a / partition of 2 Gb should be more than enough. I'd suggest you make /usr about 5 Gb. The size of your /home will depend on how much space you're going to need for personal files. If the bulk of those files are going to be shared with windows (i.e. on a FAT partition) /home needn't be very big (say 2+ Gb)