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multiple hard drives

ok, so i am very new to linux, less than a week and i took the plunge totally, just wiped out windows, so i have a lot of stupid questions. This one is: I have multiple hard drives on my machine a 4 gig OS drive and a 40 gig drive... how can i keep the 4 gig from filling up??? what folders am i able to move easily and which ones are a bit trickier??

does this belong here???? or am i in the wrong forum? *looks around*

Well it depends on how you partitioned your drive before installation. I too just installed Linux on my machine last week but I read found some suggestions before the actual install to have different partitions for different directories like so:

ex: 40GB drive and 512MB RAM

/boot - 500MB
/swap - 1GB (partition and format as "swap")
/ - 12GB
/home - 5GB
/var - 2.5GB

Just ballpark figures really. you could partition as you'd please. But that way you have more control over the saved data in case you need to re-install or whatever.

If you have nothing on your 40GB HDD, you should install Linux on the 40GB and use your 4 GB HDD as a slave device for storage or something else.

As for partitions, if you want to use Linux as a workstation (not server), you can use your Linux distribution's default settings.
If you want to manually set them, I suggest:

/boot - 75 MB
SWAP - 256 to 512 MB
/
/home

A good article
Proper Filesystem Layout

My partitioning:

Code:

 root@uilleann # fdisk -l



Disk /dev/hdc: 255 heads, 63 sectors, 1027 cylinders

Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 bytes



  Device Boot    Start      End    Blocks  Id  System

/dev/hdc1  *        1      1027  8249346    c  Win95 FAT32 (LBA)



Disk /dev/hda: 255 heads, 63 sectors, 4865 cylinders

Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 bytes



  Device Boot    Start      End    Blocks  Id  System

/dev/hda1  *        1      1215  9755991    c  Win95 FAT32 (LBA)

/dev/hda2          1215      2429  9751455    7  HPFS/NTFS

/dev/hda3          2429      2441    99855  83  Linux

/dev/hda4          2442      4865  19470780    5  Extended

/dev/hda5          2442      2504    506016  82  Linux swap

/dev/hda6          2505      2931  3429846  83  Linux

/dev/hda7          2932      3358  3429846  83  Linux

/dev/hda8          3359      3785  3429846  83  Linux

/dev/hda9          3786      4212  3429846  83  Linux

/dev/hda10        4213      4865  5245191  83  Linux



Disk /dev/hdb: 255 heads, 63 sectors, 9729 cylinders

Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 bytes



  Device Boot    Start      End    Blocks  Id  System

/dev/hdb1  *        1      1244  9986917+  83  Linux

/dev/hdb2          1244      2518  10238886  83  Linux

/dev/hdb3          2519      3793  10241437+  83  Linux

/dev/hdb4          3794      9729  47680920  83  Linux

Code:

# Duron 950 Red Hat 7.3 /etc/fstab file

/dev/hda7        /              reiserfs        defaults                1 1

/dev/hda3        /boot          ext3                defaults                1 2

none            /dev/pts        devpts                gid=5,mode=620                0 0

/dev/hda9        /home          reiserfs        defaults                1 2

/dev/hdc1        /mnt/storage    vfat                defaults                0 0

/dev/hda1        /mnt/win98        vfat                defaults                0 0

/dev/hda2        /mnt/win2k        ntfs                defaults                0 0

none            /proc          proc                defaults                0 0

none            /dev/shm        tmpfs                defaults                0 0

/dev/hdb4        /pub            ext3                defaults                1 2

/dev/hda10        /snd            reiserfs        defaults                1 2

/dev/hda5        swap            swap                defaults                0 0

/dev/cdrom        /mnt/cdrom        iso9660                noauto,owner,kudzu,ro  0 0

/dev/fd0        /mnt/floppy    auto                noauto,owner,kudzu        0 0

That article was about servers and the like for corporations and groups. Anything about home users? Once we get our Dell 8300 up and running, I'm going to try to convince my dad to let me throw Linux on the 4300, since it will have 2 80GB's instead of 1. But if I use 2 80GB's, which I know is DEFINATELY more than I need for Linux, I have no idea how to allocate what available space(probably either around 40GB or 80GB) is left for Linux. Sure, I'd have probably around 50MB for /Boot, since I don't play with that too much, and I have 512MB of RAM on the 4300, so probably anywhere between 1-1.5GB for Swap, but other than that, would I make about .5GB for /var and leave the rest for / and the remaining?

I know it's best to have /home as a separate partition, but how much space is best for that area, % wise? Remember, this is a home computer, so all the applications are stored on it, same with music, videos, etc.