How to partition a 120 GB HDD?

Darklion · 11-22-2005, 08:18 PM

One nice new 120 GB HDD. Slackware 10.2 4 CD-ROM set.

Question is, how do I slice it up? Do I give myself a gigantic /home? Put everything on its own partition? What sizes are good for /usr and /tmp?

Any suggestions or layouts are welcome. Thanks in advance!

Darklion

rkelsen · 11-22-2005, 08:57 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Darklion
One nice new 120 GB HDD. Slackware 10.2 4 CD-ROM set.

Question is, how do I slice it up? Do I give myself a gigantic /home? Put everything on its own partition? What sizes are good for /usr and /tmp?

Since its only one disk it won't really make any difference.

What I'd do:

First 2 gigs swap
next 17 gigs /
next 17 gigs spare partition (comes in handy for upgrading, etc)
next 2 gigs /var
next 2 gigs /tmp (if you don't intend to use tmpfs)
the remaining 80 gigs /home

Note that copying large files across partitions can be a painfully slow exercise on one disk, which is why I haven't suggested a data storage partition. IMO, putting '/usr' in its own partition is a waste unless its on a separate disk.

shilo · 11-22-2005, 08:59 PM

The reason there is no definative answer is because so much depends on your personal taste. Here's my 120G:

Code:

shilo@shilo2:~$ df -h
Filesystem            Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/hda1             4.7G  886M  3.8G  19% /
/dev/hda3              14G  4.1G   10G  29% /usr
/dev/hda5             2.8G  555M  2.3G  20% /opt
/dev/hda6             6.6G  3.8G  2.8G  58% /var
/dev/hda7             9.4G   33M  9.3G   1% /tmp
/dev/hda8              75G   11G   64G  14% /home

Important to note:
I keep a mirror of Slackware current on the /var partition
The idea of the large /tmp is to accomodate DVD burning
This doesn't account for my multimedia files, which I have a separate drive for
This is probably overkill for you
The more ReiserFS partitions, the longer the boot time

imitheos · 11-23-2005, 06:30 AM

It depends on your needs.

Mail server usually needs large /var (also news server)
Web server needs large whatever partition the web files will be.

If this is a desktop box with only you as a user then make the partitions you want and use the rest as /home.

for example i have 1gb RAM and i use 500MB swap, 10G for /, 15G for /usr and the rest for /home
You can make /usr/local a different partition to help upgrades later.
If there are 100 posts there will be 100 different scenarios.

If you are familiar with LVM then you can make a / partition which will be rather large so that there will be no problems and
put all the other partitions under LVM. This way you don't care much about how you will partition, because you can later resize them.

For example if /usr is full but you have 10g free in /home you reduce /home by 2gb and give them to /usr

It is just a bit more obscure than the normal partitions setup.

Geist3 · 11-23-2005, 08:08 AM

I'm going to partition my new 160GB hard drive so I have installation space already mapped out for the future. For 120GB under this plan, you'd only go as far as hda24.

hda2 and hda3 are for "old" data that will eventually sort out of my /home partition. They are primary partitions, so if I want to later use them as a "slice" for FreeBSD, NetBSD or OpenBSD, they are ready. Otherwise "old" stuff.

I know my scheme is completely over the top, but I like multiple installations of slack. I like to keep the entire outdated installs -- complete with their /home partitions -- as a form of backup. Of course, I can always change my mind in how I use all those extra various-sized partitions.
___________________________
-------------------------
hda1 00200 /boot
hda2 15000 /gold
hda3 15000 /fold
_________________________
** hda4 START EXTENDED LOGICAL **
_________________________
hda5 00500 Linux swap
_________________________
[1] Slackware 10.2
29 GB
-------------------------
hda6 03000 /
hda7 06000 /usr
hda8 03000 /usr/local
hda9 01000 /var
hda10 15000 /home
hda11 01000 /tmp

-------------------------
_________________________
hda12 00500 Linux swap
_________________________
[2] Slackware 11.0
29 GB
-------------------------
hda13 03000 /
hda14 06000 /usr
hda15 03000 /usr/local
hda16 01000 /var
hda17 15000 /home
hda18 01000 /tmp

-------------------------
_________________________
[3] Slackware 11.1
29 GB
-------------------------
hda19 03000 /
hda20 06000 /usr
hda21 03000 /usr/local
hda22 01000 /var
hda23 15000 /home
hda24 01000 /tmp
_________________________
hda25 00500 Linux swap
_________________________
[4] Slackware 12.0
29 GB
-------------------------
hda26 03000 /
hda27 06000 /usr
hda28 03000 /usr/local
hda29 01000 /var
hda30 15000 /home
hda31 01000 /tmp
_________________________
hda32 12000 /cold
_________________________