Ahh the art of partitioning. Partition Magic is very good at resizing. If
you want to keep windows around, shrink the partition but keep the windows
partition as the first partition on the drive. From there you can create
up to 3 more primary partitions (for a total of 4 on one hard disk) or
create one extended partition with mutiple drives. Partition Magic will
most likey default to an extended partition, this is fine, and the most
common.
Now the question is how to devide up that space. (and how much do you
need.) Everything below includes a swap partition. Don't forget the swap
partition. 2xRAM is a general rule of thumb for your swap partition.
How you partition is a matter of preference and need. I suggest at least
having a seperate / and /home.
Here are my space guidelines for common mountpoints:
/ - 150mb
|- /boot - 10mb, generally only needed in special cases.
|- /home - Give your self plenty of room for mp3, download, etc.
|- /usr - 2gb minimum, more is better.
|- /usr/local - Depends on what you'll be installing here.
|- /var - 500mb minimum. More and more GNOME stuff is using var.
|- /tmp _ 250mb-500mb. Some applications like filling /tmp (VMWare)
|- /opt - Depends on what you'll be installing here.
Partitioning a UNIX system is need and personal preference based, so come
up with your own rules based on what you'll be doing and the space
suggestions above.
| Andrew S. Zbikowski | Home: 763.591.0977 |
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