How to partition
From The Linux Mint Wiki
You partition your hard disk differently in Linux than in Windows. You always have a swap partition, and you should have more than one other partition.
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[edit] Make several partitions
The vote is out on exactly how to partition, but one useful scheme could be to besides the swap have a large home partition and a smaller root partition, with just Mint. A more elaborate scheme envisages separate partitions for /usr and /var (and more). If you come from Windows XP you should create a small partition for your Firefox and Thunderbird profiles so you can share them between XP and Mint.
Be cautious and don't let XP write to your Linux partitions (can be done with third party programs) to avoid damage from viruses in Windows
[edit] A simple suggestion
If you want to dual boot with Win XP read the post about this! The Mint istaller gives you the possibility to change the size of existing partitions, so (defrag first) you can make room on your drive(s).
/ --Contains Mint possibly 8 GB (root)
/profile --Sharing your browser/mail profiles maybe 1 GB. Move your profiles here, instructions are on the Mozilla pages [1]
This makes it possible to use the same profiles under Mint and Windows (at least XP)
This partition is mounted like this:
/dev/sdb1 /media/sdb1 ntfs-3g defaults,nls=utf8,umask=000,gid=46 0 1
With Daryna you use:
/dev/sdb1 /media/sdb1 ntfs defaults,umask=007,gid=46 0 1
If you choose to use FAT32 just put use that instead of ntfs-3g. (And of course you have to adjust the sdb1 part to whats in your computer.)
/swap A few GB about twice the size of your memory
/home --With your personal stuff the rest of the disk
[edit] What filesystem should you use?
Probably ext3 unless you have some other preference :)
[edit] Some schemes
Below are some schemes taken from a thread in the forum http://www.linuxmint.com/forum/viewtopic.php?highlight=partition&t=358
This is to a large extent just copied here. It's originally written by scorp123 one of the forum moderators
[edit] An elaborate scheme
Before exploring this we should take a look what mount-points a typical UNIX and/or Linux system has. And I will sort them here by read/write access likeliness - meaning: Those mount-points which will mostly be read are on the top, followed by mount-points which mostly will get written to:
/boot -- contains the boot loader and boot menu. Is mostly read at boot time, has only limited numbers of write accesses. Because of its importance this should be the first Linux partition on the disk.
/ -- contains all the other filesystems, plus important locations such as /etc, /sbin, /lib, and many other important places that cannot exist on separate partitions. Can have some limited write accesses (e.g. temporary files in /tmp) but for the most of the time only gets read accesses. Because of its importance for the boot process this partition should be right after the /boot partition (otherwise the heads of the disk have to move a lot, especially during the boot process ...)
/usr -- contains all the binaries and the X11 graphical interface (e.g. /usr/X11R6) and libraries that don't belong to the OS proper but rather to an application somewhere somehow (e.g. /usr/lib). Only gets bigger write accesses when applications get installed or someone compiles a kernel (the kernel sources are usually located in /usr/src/linux), other than that this mount-point mostly gets read from not written to. Because of its importance for the boot process and overall significance for the functioning of the system this partition should be right before or right after the " / " partition.
/opt -- some distributions use this for optional stuff, e.g. non-essential tools (from the system's point of view!) such as GoogleEarth and other things that are considered "nice to have" but not really "must have or the system won't work without it". This partition can be anywhere on the disk, but I personally prefer to place it before /var ...
/srv -- some distributions use this to run their WWW and/or FTP servers in there. Sometimes admins chose to create this mount-point as some sort of "sand box" in which they run their network services. Can have some fair amount of write accesses, especially if you have stuff running in there that produces logs.
/var -- used for variable data. Usually your system logs are in there (e.g. /var/log/* ), some distributions use it for the WWW pages that are being served (e.g. /var/www). Gets mostly written to, and then a lot!
/home -- where the users place all their stuff. Bookmarks, config files created by all the various applications and desktops, all one's personal files, and all the stuff you do all day ends up here. Gets read and written to like mad.
So ... given how certain mount-points get written to a lot and others don't, I'd order them the way as written above. Now let's assume you have a 100 GB disk you want to partition, and you will use your system for WWW (e.g. to host your personal homepage on it + a small forum?) and maybe for some FTP (e.g. to exchange files easily with other users?), here is the partitioning I would suggest:
/dev/hda1: /boot, 50 MB min., 150 MB max.
/dev/hda2: /, 2 GB min.
/dev/hda3: extended partition, up and until the end of the disk
/dev/hda5: /usr, at least 5 GB
/dev/hda6: /opt ... if you want it. 2 GB should be enough
/dev/hda7: /srv ... if you really want it. At least 4 GB
/dev/hda8: /var ... at least 2 GB.
/dev/hda10: /home ... at least 75-80 GB if we take a 100 GB disk as basis
/dev/hda11: swap ... 2x the size of your RAM, but not more. If you have like 2 GB RAM, then 1x the size of your RAM should be enough.
Now, the beauty in this setup is that first of all it's properly partitioned and less likely to give you headaches, and the second aspect is that all the partitions with lots of read accesses are concentrated towards the beginning of the harddisk (which is at the perifery, not the center as with CD disks) whereas the partitions which will get lots of write accesses and which are more likely to fragment a little are towards the end of the harddisk.
[edit] A somewhat less elaborate scheme
OK, let's talk about a simplified scheme where you indeed put all the OS into one single " / " root filesystem, e.g. you don't want to create separate /boot and /usr partitions, but you create a separate /home so you can keep your data. Let's also assume you want to have multiple distributions on the same harddisk, e.g. they will all share your /home partition (you could still use different user names if needed):
I'd then suggest to put your root filesystems to the front of the harddisk as the grub or lilo boot loaders might have troubles if you place them towards the end. Windows XP doesn't have this problem apparently, so I assume a Windows partition can be anywhere on the disk.
Also, let's again take a 100 GB disk as basis. So I'd partition like this:
/dev/hda1 -- 8 GB, e.g. LinuxMint
/dev/hda2 -- 8 GB, e.g. SuSE 10.2
/dev/hda3 -- extended partition, includes the rest of the harddisk
/dev/hda5 -- Windows XP, e.g. 50 GB
/dev/hda6 -- /home, e.g. 30 GB
/dev/hda7 -- swap, whatever is left of the harddisk (around 4 GB)
With a partitioning scheme like this you could constantly format /dev/hda1 and /dev/hda2 again and again and install any distribution you want to try.
A word of caution. Your personal settings are in /home and they can get garbled if you are not careful (and even if you are) but mostly you should be ok.
[edit] When you install - the use of GParted.
This is also where you select which partitions to format. BE VERY CAREFUL when you do that! You could write down what's on your partitions as soon as you know it and format just the minimum needed.
Shortly after you begin the install you come to a section where you choose how to partition your drive. I strongly suggest that you choose to manually create partitions.
If you choose another option, you may either end up with disks not divided as you like or that GParted hangs (at least if you have low memory).
Remember that GParted can change the size of partitions (even ntfs). You right click for several of the alternatives such as delete, move or resize, and for some options you have pull down menus, like which partition to use for / (root), /home and /swap. Remember that swap wants to be a logical partition, so you must make one extended partition to make room for swap. Place your /home partition as a logical partition here too if you want as there can only be four primary partitions one of which may be an extended partition.
This is not a guide to GParted, just to advice you to look around so you see all options before you proceed. You can choose partition for grub, but you have to look for the place you do this (different with different versions of the installer).
