Partitioning
  I have had a lot of requests and questions about partitioning. This is a long time in the making, but better late than never. The information on this page is my personal preference for partitioning methods and what works for me. Others may do things differently, but I stand by what you see on this page. I am trying to include as many visuals as possible to make things very clear for those who aren't used to partitioning their drives or anyone who would like more information.

Tools of the Trade

I use and advocate using Partition Magic 8 (yes the version number is significant). This is not free software generally, how you go about getting it is up to you. I'll leave it at that. Be sure to use the bootdisks if you can, I trust them a lot more than the actual installed software. I only use the floppies.

I use Partition Magic 8 for: creating fat32, ntfs partitions, deleting partitions and for resizing fat32 and ntfs partitions as well as converting ntfs to fat32 and vice versa. *Very important - before you resize or convert any fat32 or ntfs partition, I highly recommend you run a scandisk and defrag that partition. If you do not do this, you could corrupt your partition and lose all your information.

I generally recommend using the tools that are used during the install process of most linux cds.

Although I have used Gnu Parted, it is not very user friendly so I will use the linux partitioning tools included with most distributions instead to make things clearer.

So, let's take a look at Disk Druid which is included with a lot of distributions like Red Hat and other rpm based distros as well as others.. For my purposes of showing how things work, I am going to reference the Red Hat install guide for partitioning. I will show you pictures and explain how it works in as much detail without losing the focus of what I am trying to accomplish - to show you how to partition without having to read tons of documentation.


The Steps

First you want to decide if you are installing linux on a computer with only one hard drive or whether you are using a more complicated configuration. If you are just using one hard drive then it will makes things a bit easier, either way, try to pay attention to the information to validate what you have in mind. Like I said, this is the way I like to do things, but you may choose something different, please use this as a guideline.


Here are two thumbnails that I will be referring to throughout the process,
click to enlarge them if you want a clearer, larger view.


Fig 1
Fig 2
If you already have windows on your drive and need to resize the partition, be sure to run a scandisk, do a defrag and then I recommend using Partition Magic 8 to resize your partition in the amount you like. If you want to convert it from fat32 to ntfs or better yet from ntfs to fat32 so you can have full read and write access while using linux, then it is probably better to resize first as it will save time since part of the drive will be unallocated anyway after the resizing - no sense spending time waiting it to convert partition space that will be unallocated anyway. As usual, be careful with this stuff, as although correct steps are taken, data is always vulnerable so back up your info ahead of time just in case.

One of the first screens you will see if where you can choose what hard drive you will use you use. If you already have partitions created on the computer that you want to maintain, then choose "keep all partitions and use existing free space". If you just want to allow linux to place the partitions for you, you can just check off the drive you are using (if only one then leave it checked) and pick autoallocate and make sure that the box at the bottom of the screen that says "display partitions to be used" or something to that effect. This will bring you to a screen where you can make sure that there aren't any partitions that are on your drive that will be affected. As in Fig. 1 there are partitions that are checked off to be formatted. The screen you will see will look similar if you choose to autoallocate in that the partitions that will be erased via formatting will be checked off, so if you see anything checked off that shouldn't be, you will need to go back and make some corrections.

Fig 2. is really what I would like to focus on here. The box shows that the "add a partition" feature has been opened. There are other options as well as you can see in the menu in Fig. 1. In terms of adding the partition, I generally recommend creating the following:

* If you are adding linux by itself to a hard drive or adding it to a hard drive with only one primary partition used (most commonly windows), then I do the following.

Each hard drive starts with four primary partitions available. If you have an empty drive, you will have four available, if you already have windows on it and it uses only one partition, you will have three available. I am just going to use those as examples here.

I recommend using primary partitions because even if one gets corrupted, it should not affect the other. However, if you are using logical partitions, and you need to delete one for some reason, it will delete anything that has branched off from it. To learn even more on partitioning, see the Installation page.

To create a partition using disk druid, click on the Add tab on the menu seen in Fig. 1. From there you should see Fig. 2 appear. Here is where you can choose the details.

The top line says mount point. Here is where you choose from the following:

/swap = swap partition
/ = root partition where all of your install files are stored files are kept unless you create a different partition for that such as:
/home = used to store a lot of your configuration files in a hidden directory and also where you likely will store your own data. This is the part of your system that you will have full read and write access to as a regular user. Most other directories are read only and reserved for root use only.
/usr = where most of your installed applications reside. Most installed applications are in /usr/bin and /usr/lib as well as other directories within /usr.

There are more mount points but I am going to stick with those for this guide.

So the first thing to do is to pick the mount point. It is usually best to start with either /swap or / (root).

Creating a Primary Partition
You would select root as your mount point which is signified on the drop down menu (click on the arrow in the top right) as this symbol " / ". Underneath that is the filesystem type. It is most commonly ext3, I tend to prefer that over ext2, but if you have specific reasons, you may adjust this. Then you need to put in your size in mb. So if you want your root partition to be 10GB, you would type in 10000 (as in 10000 mb). Under that it should have "fixed size" checked off. I prefer using that choice but if you prefer, you can use "fill all space (up to)" which allows you to type in the amount or you can change it to 'fill to maximum allowable size if you already created a swap file or you have chosen not to use one for some reason and you want to use the rest of your hard drive for your root partition. Finally and most importantly in my opinion, there are two unchecked boxes at the bottom.
One says "force to be a primary partition" and the other says "check for bad blocks. You need to make sure that you check off "force to be a primary partition" if you want your newly created partition to be primary.

If you would like to add other partitions, just repeat the same steps, keeping in mind to specificy the mount points and the size and also to check off "force to be a primary partition". Reminder: swap files should be the same as your amount of ram but not larger than 512mb (in my opinion). For exceptional circumstances like extreme high end video/audio editing and other excessively demanding applications, you may want to delve into the uses of a large swap file.

So, let's say you already have windows on the drive occupying one primary partition, that will leave you with three, so here are some scenarios to choose crom

* "/" means root partition

A: bare minimum:
/swap partition in the amount of your ram not exceeding 512
/ partition that uses up the rest of the drive.

B: protect your /home files (when I have only 3 primary partitions, I choose this method):
/swap - primary
/ - primary (leave room for /home)
/home - primary in the amount you like (so if you format your /root partition, your home will be intact and untouched, this is good for trying out different distros)

C: protect your /usr partition:
/swap - primary
/ - primary (leave room for /usr)
/usr - primary

If you have four primary partitions with which to work (empty hard drive):

you may choose options A, B, or C as above of which any are fine, but if you would like, you may use all four primary partitions (just because they are available doesn't mean you have to use them, but it is your option)

D: protect /home and /usr partitions

/swap - primary
/ - primary (leave room for two more)
/home - primary (leave room for one more)
/usr - (uses the free leftover space)

Once you create your partitions, continue with your install. If you get an error from the linux partitioning tool, go back and double check your partitions.


Well, I hope this document was helpful. I will be making improvements/additions to it where I can in the future.