Fresh installing Win7 and linux. Partitioning recommendations?

[kolosus]

I've never had to install Win7 before but I'm going to be setting up a dual boot with Win7 and linux. I need recommendation. Yes. I know. I shouldn't install Win7 at all.

My question is. When I'm going to be installing Win7 its definitely going to be asking about partitioning and such. How should I go about this? I have a 200 gb hard drive. It is a Toshiba Satellite M305D-S4831 machine.

What I used to do before is have one partition for WinXP, one for linux and one for swap. If I wanted to place aother linux distro I'd also make one (small) partition for testing and such. But I read Win7 needs a "recovery" partition.

What would be the ideal partition setup?

What about bootloaders? Will Win7 throw a hissy fit when its not in sole control of my mbr? Use GRUB?

Thanks in advance folks.

[Xenaflux]

if it was mine, I would setup Win7 in Virtualbox.
You got 4Gb memory to play with.
Other than that, sorry. Don't know what win7 will do to you  

[Ramchu]

There is no exact partition set up.

You will have to determine just how many gig's you want to allocate for Win 7.

I would recommend a 15gig partition for the /partition

 I seem to remember that the general rule for swap is if you have 2gig of ram
then you should have a 2 gig swap partition

Then you will have to determine just how big you want your /home partition

Myself I have 50 gig for WinXP
my / is 20 gig
swap is 4gig
/home is the rest ( 150 gig about )

Just be sure to install Win 7 first
then when you install PCLinuxOS grub will be your boot loader
and give you the option to boot into which ever you choose

[Aradalf]

I would probably create a 40-50 GB partition for Winders 7, a 20-30 GB partition for /, 4GB swap, and the rest for a /Data NTFS partition which can hold all your personal Documents, Music, Pictures, etc. I would also create symbolic links from ~/Documents to /Data/Documents, from ~/Pictures to /Data/Pictures, etc. That's basically what I do with dreaded Vista now(Yes, I know, Vista ), except I have other partition for other distributions I test, though I do most of my testing in Virtualbox.

[Lucky Blue]

First, you can access W programs from Wine, or you can use virtualization (eg virtualBox) to use W from a Linux PC.
The good old fashioned way is to dual boot.  There is much misc stuff on the web and this site on how to do it and the following is what I have gathered.  Comments etc welcome as it is what I may be doing soon. 

The situation is: A new PC, or new HD, or a clean HD wipe. 

Pre-partitioning is an option.  Use a live CD of PartitionMagic (or other partition tool).  First delete all existing partitions.  Then, create the partition for W as this is to go on first thus avoiding bootloader problems. 
Allow 15Gb for W7 plus space for programs/applications and data.   Format ntfs.  You can then as an option have another partition for W for recovery or sharing files, format this as ntfs.
Then make a partition for 'swap' of 2Gb. Not mounted. No format(?).  Then a partition for root "/" of size from 10 Gb frugal or 50Gb generous, format ext4.  Then a partition 'data' of say 100Gb for your personal files/data, format ext4, mount as '/home/<user>/data. 
Other partitions can follow for other Linux distros which will use the same 'swap'. 

If you do not pre-partition:
Install W7 first, setup, install programs/applications, defrag, shrink to 15Gb (or more) with a Partition Magic CD.   
Then install PCLinuxOS.

Allow x hours for installing W, allow 20 to 30 mins for PClos.
Check - ask if you need to know about primary, exteded or logical partitions.
good luck.

[shrinivas]

I would suggest the following partitions:

1) Win 7 at least 50-60 GB, because if it is a 64-bit installation, at the minimum, it takes 16-17 GB for the winblows installation itself. ( I would suggest you opt for a 32-bit Win 7, 64-bit win7 is still buggy and slooow !). And you may need a few GB's for other programs and some extra space (at least 15-20% free space for de-fragmentation etc.)
2) 15 GB space for root of our glorious PCLinuxOs.
3) 4 GB for swap, you may need a large swap if you hibernate or for creating mylivecd
4) 50 GB for home (PCLinuxOs)
 
The rest of the drive may be formatted as ntfs, so both Win 7 and PClinuxOs can access. If you leave more space for linux, windows will be unable to access.

Of course, you have to install win 7 first and then the better O/S PCLinuxOs afterwards.

Regards

[kolosus]

Thanks for all the suggestions folks.

So my next question is... Some of you are suggesting a shared partition for sharing files with win7. Is that necessary? Cant I just drop files into win7's partition like I did on xp?

Nobody mentioned grub. So I'm guessing that grub as the boot loader is not a problem? Win7 is not going to get all stinky when its not in control of my mbr?

[T6]

"I've never had to install Win7 before but I'm going to be setting up a dual boot with Win7 and linux. I need recommendation. Yes. I know. I shouldn't install Win7 at all."

why not?

if you need it use it, it is your right to use the tool that can help you complete the task you need to do

about space, how big is the hard disk?

is a desktop pc or a laptop?

http://www.pclinuxos.com/forum/index.php/topic,69910.0.html

apart from that link i can tell that a big swap is a waste of space if you have more than 2 gb of ram and ralely use big apps like edit images or lots of virtual machines, my netbook with 1 gb of ram ralely uses more than 500 mbs of ram from 1gb available and no swap at all, that is using lots of apps and kde4 with compiz and also some windows app on wine

about a shared partition linux can access perfectly without a single problem all the folders of that win 7 install, windows is not as smart as this so if you want to share files with windows from linux you will have to copy from linux to windows or create a ntfs partition to leave files for both os but if you don't need to do this forget this extra partition

about installing windows and linux, if i remember correctly grub can handle both os, first install linux, then windows and after windows finishes to remove mbr restore it with the livecd you used to install linux, fixmbr should do it, if this is not enough i remember a article on the pclinux magazine talking about this more extensively but maybe it is a old article

the size of each partition depends on the size of the hard disk and the usage of each os, win 7 will need at least 50 gbs of space, the thing wastes around 30 gbs in god knows what including a ghost partition with 100 gbs but in reality is only 16 or 14(can't remember now)

for linux if you are going to have a /data or /home partition your / partition can be small(10 to 15gbs) but if you are only going to have / partition and swap your / should be around 40+ because all the home folder files will be stored in /home/thenameofyouruser and that is ok, i have done it since 2007 in pclinux and forever in all other linux distros i have installed and used

the rest could be a shared partition for both os or just split the hard disk and half for linux and the other for windows

[kolosus]

The reason I never had to install win7 is because all the computers that I owned came with a xp license. I just bought a used laptop and it came with a win7 license. So instead of trying to superimpose xp on it I'm going to format it and leave 7 on it. A fresh copy of 7... thus the questions.

The hdd is 200 gb. I've thought about upgrading it to a 500 gb or something... given the cheap state of laptop drives but I've decided to hold off on that for a bit in the hopes of the 1TB drives getting within my price range.

It comes with 4gb ram. More than I've ever had in any of my machines.

Thanks for all the advice folks. I think I'm up to tackling this problem now.