I’m getting a laptop (Lenovo T61) for college and I plan on dual-booting between Windows XP and Ubuntu. I’m trying to figure out the best way to partition my 160GB hard drive and what file system each partition should use. What I was thinking was this:
System partion for Ubuntu (maybe 6-8GB) - ext3 or similar
System partition for XP (maybe 8-10GB) - NTFS
Shared partition for files (remaining space) - NTFS, as I believe both operating systems can read and write this format.I figure many people here are running similar setups. Is this a good way to go about partitioning? What setup works best for you?
Hm… You might want do devote a little more room to each os (ie give 8 to ubuntu and 10 to windows). I’m sure you won’t need it for ubuntu, but It’s always better to be sure. Also, if my understanding is correct, the windows partition will hold all of the (installed) windows programs. So between XP and any games you might want, that space could get sucked up pretty quickly.
I can’t really comment on creating that sort of a shared partition: I’ve never done it before. However, the principle of it sounds very good; you have access to all the same files but without any of the os-specific directory messes.
Currently I am dual-booting Ubuntu and XP. I gave XP 66% and Ubuntu 33%. Now that I think back on it, I should’ve given XP 25% and Ubuntu 75% (I almost never use XP anymore), but I don’t use up enough space right now to justify re-partitioning.
Don’t forget you have to give your ubuntu swap a few gigs also. Just give xp a little more so you don’t have to get stuck worrying about it. Same for the Ubuntu /home directory and maybe the (/) partition. You can’t really screw it up unless you cut yourself short. (/xp) partition - (/swap) - (/home) - (/) - (/storage). This is how I run my new HP dv 6785se laptop.
Thanks for the info and ideas so far. I didn’t think about where installed windows programs would go, so thanks for reminding me - it would seem that making the partitions larger is a good idea. I know Windows software can be installed to other partitions, but in my experience Windows will get finicky about running software taht isn’t in the default C:\Program Files\ directory.
I mainly want to be able to access pictures, movies, music, and documents (and Blender files) on both OS’s. I’ll have an external drive too, for backup and if I run out of media space.
I just went with a WUBI install and gave Ubuntu 15 gigs of my 120 gb hd on my laptop. I then use my NTFS drive (Vista) as my data drive and have my Blender folder and several others linked to my Home folder. Works slick as snot. No repartitioning. No messing with Vista boot loader (which is much harder to get working again if you mess it up as compared to XP.)
So, I have a single NTFS partition with Ubuntu installed in C:\Ubunutu. All my Blender files are located in C:\Blender. I automount the C:\ drive in Ubuntu and then created a link to the C:\Blender folder to /home/me/blender/.
You can navigate to the Windows mount in Ubunutu and then drag your My Documents, My Pictures, My Music etc onto the shortcut pane on the left. That makes it really easy to navigate.
I did have actual partitions set up but ended up needing to increase the Vista one as I wanted to install more programs and things just got messy. With this setup, things have been smooth.
Ubuntu should be on ext3, with a linux swap partition
windows needs to be on ntfs
windows programs, however, can be installed anywhere
in this case, what i suggest:
i will assume you haven’t installed any of them yet
install windows
then install ubuntu and do manual partitioning
you want to leave your windows partition (10 gigs or so) alone
make one ubuntu, 5 gigs, as mount point “/”
one linux-swap partition (usually twice the size of your ram)
another one for your files, however big you want as “/home” make this fat32 and you can access it from both and store all your files on it. you can also make another partition for windows programs if you want (games etc.)
the reason you keep your /home seperate from the rest of your ubuntu installation, is so that if you install another version or w/e, you can keep all your files. plus, if it’s fat32, there is nothing stopping either OS from accessing it.
I would also recommend the extra windows partition for programs is fat32, so that it can be (easily and safely with no hassle) accessed from within ubuntu.
DO NOT make your Linux root partition(or data partition, if you can avoid it) readable in windows!. Should you get a bad virus you can say goodbye to your Linux partition(s) as well. This is also a problem with things like WUBI, as it installs onto the main windows partition. while in windows Linux’s tight sucuraty measures don’t mean squat!.
There is no perfect answer to a sheared data partition. ext3, Linux’s main partition format, dose not fragment unless you use 80+ percent of the disk space. It can be read in windows using an add on driver but permitions are ignored, which is bad. FAT32 can be read by both OS’s, but single files cannot be larger than 4gig. FAT filesystems also fragment redaly. NTFS can contain files larger than 4 GIG, but also fragments fairly easely, although its not as bad as FAT, again scurity is a problem. A good comprimise, if you have a big enugh disk is to have a ext33 (/)(6gig) and (/home) partitions for Linux.an NTFS partition for windows stuff. ontop of that you would have a ‘share’ partition used for moveing stuff between the two. This can be FAT or NTFS.
You don’t need a shared partition, just put anything you will want in Windows in your Windows partition. As you said, both can read/write NTFS. Linux dosn’t care teat the partition has windows installed for read/write purposes