Partitioning question

[moocow2024]

I am wanting to run a dual OS on my dell machine, XP and Mint. I have a 60 gb HD on the dell laptop and I'm not exactly sure what i'm doing when it comes to partitioning. What all goes on the partition for mint? i have seen suggestions of 10 and 20 gigs, but if the OS only takes up a few gigs why would i need to partition that much just for the OS? I was assuming that most of my files would be stored on the last partition that is shared between operating systems. if someone could explain exactly what goes on that partition and maybe give me a suggestion on how you would do it, i would greatly appreciate it.

[Slocker]

I think the first question you have to ask is: in which OS I'll be working mainly? Or for what purpose you need them. Thinking in a 50/50 approach I would recommend to use 20GB for Windows, 10 GB for Linux Mint / (root) partition, and 30GB to /home or shared partition. Now, if you're going to work mainly in Mint I'd recommend you to format the /home partition into ext3 (though I prefer ReiserFS, there's a Windows program (http://www.fs-driver.org/download.html) which can mount natively and transparently ext3 partitions).

If you're going to work on Windows, I would format that 30GB partition into FAT32, and use the 10GB for the whole Mint system.

Edit:
Sorry I've forgotten the swap partition, depending on your RAM I would choose between 1 o 2 GB. The lesser, the bigger . And I'd take it from the shared (or /home) partition, as it is the big fish here .

Hope I've helped!