at present my desktop win98 and Linux is set up as:-

hda7 / _
hda8 /swap

laptop has had XP removed and is also SuSE 8.2

hda1 /
hda2 /swap

I read somewhere that it is possible to have:-

hda7 /
hda8 /swap
hda9 /home

Is it a good idea to seperate /home ?

It what I usually do since when you upgrade an operating system you can leave your data in tact and completely format over the previous opperating system.

Yes I always did this with Windows from 3.1 onwards:-

C drive O/S
D drive Programs
E drive Swap
F drive DATA


I just do not know how to do this in Linux.

set hda1 as /
hda2 /swap
hda3 /home

And now that I have a working system can I change it and make /home on a partition of its own?

If you have free unpartitioned space then it is easy. You just need to use fdisk to create a partition. fsck to create a filesystem (format the partition). Then create an fstab entry to mount the partition to /home

If you don't have unpartitioned space then you can attempt to resize your partitons using "parted". This is a more dangerous so make sure you have a backup first.

Seperating /home makes sense from a couple of perspectives.

One, it allows you to backup the partition easier, especially if you make it another physical drive in the system.

Two it allows you to re-install the OS without re-installing over your user data. An OS install usually requires you to format over the entire partition before laying down data. Having a seperate /home means you can upgrade to SuSE 8.4 or 9.0 or whatever, when it comes out, and not lose your user data.

I switched from Mandrake 8.2 to SuSE 8.2 this way.

Thanks I will look into this......now I see the advantages of 2 or more drives.