I’ve decided install Linux on my home computer (Ubuntu, if anyone cares), but I will still need Windows for certain things. My plan is to obviously have a partition for each OS, plus a partition or three for other files.
My main question is, just how much space does Windows XP Pro need? I know it will install on only a few gigs, but how much would this grow, and how quickly? I don’t want to allot 20 gigs to Windows, and find that it never needs 10. If anyone knows how much Ubuntu needs, I would like to hear it as well.
Any ideas for the remaining space? I was thinking 15-20 gigs for each OS, so that leaves between 60-70 gigs left on my 100 gig disk. I know some people like to have a partition for programs, separate from both the OS, and plain data storage. What are the pros and cons of this?
For now, I’ll just divide evenly, and let everyone adjust as they see fit.
20 gig Windows boot partition
20 gig Linux boot partition
20 gig FAT formatted shared partition
20 gig Windows program partition
20 gig Windows data partition
On my computer, XP is taking up a little over 1 gig. The software you install is going to probably take up more space than XP by itself will. You can limit how much space XP uses for stuff like the system restore, if need be. 10 gig should be plenty for just XP.
You may already know this, but if you want to save yourself a lot of headaches, install windows first, then linux.
Personally, I would use FAT32 for all of the windows partitions, including the OS. This gives you a major advantage that if something in windows goes amuck, you can go into linux and maybe fix it. A lot of people will probably disagree with me though, and say you should use NTFS for the OS. There are pros and cons either way, so it’s more of a personal choice thing.
I’ve gone both ways with the partitioning. I’ve set up systems where everything was partitioned into its own area like what you have, and I’ve set up systems where everything was in one partition. On systems where I’ve used multiple partitions, I’ve always ended up filling up one partition while leaving the others significantly more empty, then been ticked off because I had to move things around later. YMMV. This is another thing where there are pros and cons either way.
Linux also needs a swap partition, which should be at least double your physical memory size. Let windows create the windows partitions, and leave the rest of the space unpartitioned, then let linux finish off creating the linux partitions.
10 gig Windows
20 gig Linux - too much maybe?
2 gig Swap - only 512M memory now, but will be 1G soon
20 gig Windows programs
48 gig FAT shared partition
I dropped the exclusive Windows data partition because I figured it would be silly to store my data where Linux cannot write to.
The only other changes I can think of right now are maybe a smaller partition for Linux, and adding any extra to the shared space.
That looks OK, but I agree that you could use less for Linux, and add it to the shared partition. BTW, the file system should be FAT32 not FAT, and it will appear this way on some of the Linux partitioning menus.
Some gotchas that I have learned - get a copy of Partition Magic to make your life easier. This way you can resize the partitions in the future should you need to, without upsetting any of the software (if PM works for you!)
Have a look at Linux’s Logical Volume Manager (LVM - HowTo ). LVM will allow you to resize partitions within the Linux partition should you need to in the future. Some distributions (not sure about Ubuntu) will allow you to partition your Linux partition with LVM during installation.