A little partitioning advice

[Rotting]

I need just a touch of partitioning advice, as I seem to have screwed up (not TOOO royally) in my last few projects concerning gparted.

So, here's my situation and plan. I have a 750GB HDD. I want Vista, Mint, OpenSUSE and Solaris in different partitions. My "main" partitions (i.e., the ones that I'll be using 95% of the time) will be Vista and Mint. I just want OpenSUSE and Solaris on there to mess around with them and see how they work. Now, I guess the monster share of the HDD should go to Vista, since that's where all the huge games, etc. will be going.

So, I was thinking about 500GB to Vista, 150 to Mint, and 50 each to OpenSUSE and Solaris. (These aren't set in stone, so if you have a better idea, let me know!) SO, what is the best way to accomplish this? Step-by-step (in a general sense--you don't need to say "click here, click there" but more like "Make an NTFS partition here and put a ext3 in an extended partition, etc etc etc.) would be nice.

Also, is there an easy way of making an EXACT copy of a partition to copy from one HDD to another? (I want to move my current Vista installation and Mint installation from a smaller drive to this new one)?

Thanks a lot for your help.

[Fred]

Rotting,

You might want to take a look at what I have recently done with my main set-up. Pay particular attention to the idea of data partitions and cross mounting them.

Some of this may give you some ideas that you can use on your setup.

http://linuxmint.com/forum/viewtopic.ph ... 3&start=30

I believe if it was me I would put Vista on about 150 Gig. and put the linux installs on relatively small partitions as I did and break up the rest into data partitions of various kinds. Maybe a couple NTFS partitions of 100 Gig each that you cross mount and share. Maybe an ext3 linux partition of 100 Gig. you use for just Linux and backup. If you are going to have any kind of backup on the drive it would be better for it to be an ext3 file system. It will be a lot more robust than a Windows partition. Just leave the rest unallocated for later use.

Good luck,

Fred

EDIT: Sorry, I can't help you with moving Vista, But it needs to wind up on the first, primary partition of the drive if possible.

[MagnusB]

Best advice is to download the GParted liveCD, make the windows partition first, then install Vista on that, then make the other three. Remember you need a swap for linux and Solaris (?).

[Rotting]

Thanks guys for your advice. I am going to experiment with a setup along the lines of what Fred mentioned.

Thanks again.