Hard Drive Partition Sizes?

[Proletariat]

I am going to start fresh seeing as I am having issues after one day.

Just wanted to get some ideas a bout partition sizes. I want to use 25gb for the entire install.

So swap would be 2gb? What about root & ext?

Open to suggestions. First time through I dropped swap from the default 4gb to 2gb & left root as 8gb. The rest was home.

Also if I delete the partitions will I need to fix the windows mbr first or just continue with a fresh install? Will it repair grub?

[djohnston]

I want to use 25gb for the entire install.

That's barely enough for the root partition. 30GB is better. But neither allows you much room for adding programs and storing data files.

So swap would be 2gb? What about root & ext?

As a general rule of thumb, swap size should be twice the size of available RAM. However, for burning large DVDs and some multimedia tasks, swap should be at least 4GB. / is the root of the Linux filesystem. /root is the user root's home directory. Two different concepts. Define what "ext" means.

Also if I delete the partitions will I need to fix the windows mbr first or just continue with a fresh install? Will it repair grub?

That depends on what is already written. There are lots of questions, but very little usable info to go on. Boot from a PCLinuxOS live CD. Open a terminal, and enter:

su
fdisk -l
exit
exit

Post the output shown right after fdisk [space] (dash) (lowercase L).

[Proletariat]

Thanks djohnston. Too late I already done it....just. Swap is 4gb, / is 12gb, /home 5gb. I've got other drives to store files on.

Hopefully that will do for a few months to see if I can get the hang of a new system.

[Old-Polack]

Thanks djohnston. Too late I already done it....just. Swap is 4gb, / is 12gb, /home 5gb. I've got other drives to store files on.

Hopefully that will do for a few months to see if I can get the hang of a new system.

Because I store all of my data on various data partitions, I don't bother with a separate /home partition at all. I leave /home as part of the / partition. This is actually a means of insuring the most efficient use of the systems hard drive space. Had you done that, / would be 17 GB, and applications such as mylivecd would not be so likely to be starved for space when run.

[Proletariat]

So next time just create the / partition, 20gb or whatever & a 4gb swap?

[Old-Polack]

So next time just create the / partition, 20gb or whatever & a 4gb swap?

I usually go with 25-30 GB for each / partition. That gives me plenty of space for application installations and room for any process that uses a lot of temporary space. I currently have 8 installations on my main drive, with one shared swap partition and at least one OS installation on each of my drives, so any one hard drive can be run independantly, or with others. They are in external cases, so can be used with any computer that boots from either E-SATA or USB.

[Proletariat]

Thanks for that. Just have to keep it in mind for next time. 

[marcin82]

& a 4gb swap?

If you are usually using hibernation or suspension - size of swap-partition must be a little bigger than size of your physically RAM memory (1GB = 10240 MB).

[Proletariat]

Thanks marcin82 for the tip. Don't use either of those so should be right to go. 

[marcin82]

Don't use either of those so should be right to go.

In this case size of swap may be even of 512 MB

Code:

free -m
             total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
Mem:           756        700         56          0         35        376
-/+ buffers/cache:        288        468
Swap:          509          0        509

Amount of RAM = 768 MB
Using of swap  = 0 MB ;]