i am trying to install slackware 14.1
i want to know how much to allocate partitions..i'll installing lots of software and storing music files.
how much to allocate to /root /home etc .
also i want to know where will the user installed software be.does it consume space of /root or /home?

Make just one partition for / (root). No need to make separate partitions for /root, /home etc. This way you won't loose space and don't have to worry about sharing the space between partitions.

If you use Slackware packages to install stuff (shipped in Slackware as third party software packaged the Slackware way) almost nothing will go into $HOME, but hidden files and partitions. Anyway if you have only one partition for everything that doesn't matter at all.

Of course there _can_ be a need for more partitions, e.g. using several disks, box used as a server, sharing /home between distributions, etc. But I assume that's not the case. Else please tell us more about your specific use case and needs.

PS /root will stay almost empty unless you perform regular (non administrative) tasks as root. Which is highly discouraged as unsafe and insecure.

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i plan to use for developing .... and i tend to download and compile and install(configure make and make install).and maybe storing songs .you know just a desktop no admin and things like that....

Then just one partition (plus a swap partition if you need it) is enough.

Also, if you compile programs, I highly recommend that you make Slackware packages to avoid messing your system. To learn how to do that I suggest that you read this and all linked to documents plus this one and that one.

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For years I used just / and /swap and everything worked just fine.

Recently, I've taken to having a separate /home. It's a nice luxury if, for some reason, you need to reinstall, but it's not a necessity by any means. Having separate /var, /usr, etc. partitions is a legacy from the early days of computers, when hard drives were much smaller (think in terms of MBs, not GBs) and there was a real danger that a drive might fill up (the log files on /var were the biggest culprits), so different directories were put on separate physical drives. With the huge drives available today, there is no compelling reason to do that.

If you do want a separate /home, I'd allow at least 25GB for /. For swap, my rule of thumb is this (assuming that you do not want to hibernate the machine--something I generally have no interest in doing): 3GB RAM or less, swap = RAM; 4GB RAM or more, swap = 1/2 RAM.

That is just a rule of thumb. On this here computer, I have 4 GB RAM and 4 GB swap (I know, violated my own rule; that's what rules are for), and I'm barely touching swap.

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Same here-
I created a journaling fs Ext 4 / partition and a 1 GB partition for swap.
My HDD is a 500 GB Western Digital so I allocated 498 GB for the root/ and the rest to swap.
Slackware runs great for me with these 2 partitions.

Good Luck with your installation.

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Using a single Ext4 or JFS /(root) partition with a swap is the easiest method to use.

I personally use this because I use GPT partitioning:

My setup required a patched Grub-2.02~beta2 (which is available from my repo), but it's fast and nice.

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okay then i'll do it with just one partition,i have one more query if i free space from any other drive ex from f or e other than c will i be able to install on that partition ie if i shrink any other volume than c can i install linux in that space?

Here's the fstab I use here:
I have a /boot part that's not auto-mounted, a /home part, and a / and /swap. Not letting the /boot part mount helps preventing ruining it. If I need to change something, I can always mount it temporarily and run lilo on it. A separate /home part is helpful when doing reinstalls/upgrading. That way, you won't lose anything. (Of course, backing it up is still a very good idea.)

I don't let CDs automount, as I prefer to do this manually. I don't need /mnt/floppy as I don't have a floppy drive anyway.

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Yes, as long as you reformat this partition and it's large enough.

How you can partition this space depends on your disk's layout. If a partition like E for instance is on a separate disk you will have to make it a separate partition on Linux (you could also use LVM but I am not acquainted with that, others could give you advice on how to do that).

Ideally if there is no gap between D: and E: for instance, you could merge them after backup, even also with C if you don't need it any more, as a big empty space of which you could make only one big partition (plus swap if need be). You can use the tools in the Slackware installer for that, or use gparted. Just take your time and carefully plan before proceeding.

this is done during installation right?

You can do that during installation (before running setup), but it's easier to do that ahead of installation., using a GParted Live CD/USB. Even before that, from Windows use defrag. Also IIRC on recent Windows systems you can shrink and possibly merge partitions. Then you could do that before using GParted, but after having made your backup(s).

after freeing space using shrink how about using cfdsik before using setup ?

Why not? That's a good tool for what it can do.

You can use any partitioning tool you'd like if it supports linux partitions. There's some Windows utilities that will work too. I usually just use fdisk, but with GPT disks, I've had to branch out my tools.