partitioning a large disk
 

I'm going to install a a multiboot system on my desktop.I have a second drive that I'll use for storage; it's 1 TB. I know how to partition the drive that will contain the oses. but what about the 1 TB disk? Any suggestions?

I have a 500gb ext. hdd that I use for storage and I just split it down the middle, one partition as NTFS, for my Windows beneift and the other as Ext4. But as of late, I do not use Windows anymore but kept the partition as is.

Those usually come with NTFS. That will work fine with linux and BSD using ntfs-3g. And of course that will work with microsoft.

If you are using linux only then you could make it a ext4 drive. There is also exfat. Since it's 1 TB fat32 will work too, but you'll have a 4GB file size limit.

Is exFat a reliable filesystem - I thought Microsoft only revealed the "official" specification a few weeks ago?

I'd suggest ext4 for a desktop disk unless you have a good reason to use something else.

One might partition a drive to make it human readable/organized. Example might be /film, /records, /expenses and such.

There is some question about data access times if one had thousands of directories versus one single huge directory. Not sure a standard user could ever notice the difference.

If making many parition names helps you find information or if you like to use searching tools then consider making many partitions that are easy to understand.

UEFI versus legacy or hybrid mode partitioning may be of concern for some folks too. Peek at how the limits work and how systems could use them if you decide to move or upgrade.