How to partition your hard drive for Linux? How to partition your hard drive for Linux?
Linux.com published a set of videos that explain how to prepare your drive to install Linux (
http://tips.linux.com/tips/06/07/20/1654251.shtml?tid=129&tid = 50 & tid = 131 ) if you already have Windows already installed on your jar. That is, if you have a large NTFS partition that occupies your hard drive, the videos show you how to shrink it to make room for the penguin. The truth, the screencasts are quite simple (do not explain much the why of each step), but at least they can guide you if you're a lost.
™ In brief summary, which explains the videos is:
Download and burn the GParted Live disk. (
http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=115843&package_id=173828 ) (
http://gparted-livecd.tuxfamily.org/download.php ) (I think it not necessary, for example, if you are installing Ubuntu, and the installer comes with Gparted). Defragment NTFS partition (or FAT32, if applicable) within Windows. Open Gparted and shrink the Windows partition to the size you need (with 6-10 GB are more than good, depending on how many applications or games you use on Windows). Create partition root (/), swap and / home. For the first 6 Gb is sufficient, the second ideally twice your RAM (if you have 1 GB or more, leave it to 1GB), and the third with the rest of the space (there would your documents).
A dimension.
For me, the ideal in a dual boot system (Windows and Linux) is to have an extra partition for documents, shared between the two OS's, and can be FAT or NTFS (later ext3). This is because, according to the steps of Linux.com, would be leaving all our files on a partition that Windows can not read. Well illogical, right?
other words, the ideal is to leave one for Windows, one for Linux (root) one for swap, one for home (especially useful when you want to reformat and install another distro root, your user files are not lost), and other shared for your documents.
But beware, if you want a shared partition, you need to do differently from how it appears in the video 4. But do not panic. What happens is that (to put it in a way) hard drives "do not support" more than four primary partitions (normal). For this is establishing fourth extended partition on which to create logical partitions, and it solves the problem.
is, as in this case we are talking about 5 partitions (the windows, root, swap, home and documents) you will need to create an extended partition and within that new lasparticiones meter.
Now, as well as the extended partition you can have 3 primary, let my recommendation esque operating systems and other primary partitions within the extended. This is because Windows and Mac OS can not run from an extended (Linux itself, anyway). And, in my opinion, everything is more orderly to change after the partition table.
That is, in this case the thing would look like:
Partition 1: NTFS> Windows
Partition 2: Ext3 (or ReiserFS)> Linux Optional
Partition 3: HFS +> Mac OS
Partition 4: Extended (and within the coming ...) -
Partition 5: Swap (This is a file system) -
Partition 6: EXT3> Home - Partition 7: NTFS or FAT> Documents