Install/partitioning advice for 250G drive?

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jpete

Install/partitioning advice for 250G drive?

Post by jpete »

I read Fred's threads and must admit, I so much of a rank amateur that I don't follow them.

I have two 250G SATA drives that were my old RAID array. XP crashed again so I'm not interested in dual booting.

I figure one of the drives will be more than adequate but if anyone has an easy way to do a RAID 1 setup, that would be nice.

The only thing I'm really concerned about is installing Mint the best way possible, as in, easy recovery should the need arise.

And I will be creating separate profiles for myself, my wife, and three children. Five total.

Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks.
Last edited by LockBot on Wed Dec 28, 2022 7:16 am, edited 1 time in total.
Reason: Topic automatically closed 6 months after creation. New replies are no longer allowed.
goaliefight

Re: Install/partitioning advice for 250G drive?

Post by goaliefight »

I like the idea of using one large file system for /. Others like to make a separate /home. At a minimum I would keep / at 10GB. 15-20GB would be a safer number if you plan on installing a lot of apps. The rest can go to /home. Don't forget to have a swap space equal to the amount of RAM you have installed.

If you don't have a RAID controller then you will need to use software RAID. HOWTO links below:

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ei=j ... id&spell=1

Enjoy.
jpete

Re: Install/partitioning advice for 250G drive?

Post by jpete »

Actually, I just had a message pop up saying one of the drive has lots of bad sectors. Probably not a good candidate for a RAID setup. :)
Aging Technogeek

Re: Install/partitioning advice for 250G drive?

Post by Aging Technogeek »

First of all, you should definitely use manual partitioning to install Mint or any Linux distribution. Goaliefight's suggestion as to the / (root) partition size is right on but there are other things to consider.

SWAP
The swap space is generally specified as being twice the size of the available RAM. In the days of 256 Mb ram systems this was more crucial than with new multi-gigabyte systems. If your computer has less than 2 Gb of RAM, use the two to one rule. With 2-4 GB of RAM, swap equal to RAM is more than adequate. With more than 4 GB, I like to include a nominal swap space of 256-512 Mb just to keep the OS happy. More and more people are running with no swap space if they have 4 Gb of RAM and not having any problems. One caveat, if you want to use the hibernate (suspend to hard disk) function your swap space must be at least equal to your installed RAM. So, size your swap space accordingly.

/HOME
The /home partition is where the OS will store all of your personal data and files. It is also where all of the configuration files are stored. These are hidden files (identified by a . preceding the file name). If you have access to a system with Mint installed, open the /home folder and , under VIEW, check "Show Hidden Files" and see what shows up. If your installation breaks, this is the worst partition to loose. Normally, a /home partition would be 5-8 Gb but, if you keep your personal and config files in a separate data partition with simlinks back to /home, you can completely destroy the OS without harming your important files. And reduce your /home to 1-2 Gb. For more on data partitions, simlinks, and automounting partitions on boot, reread fred's posts

http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=90&t=11872 and

http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.p ... partitions

It may take some time and a few posts to this forum for clarification, but it is well worth the effort.

That pretty much covers what I know about the basics of installing Mint. (I learned it all from fred) Hope it helps and enjoy using Linux Mint.
mick55

Re: Install/partitioning advice for 250G drive?

Post by mick55 »

Hi jpete

Since you said Fred's tutorial was above your level of expertise, here is my advice.

Boot the Cd, select automatic partitioning and let the installer do it all for you.
Since you are going to dedicate the entire drive to Mint this is the simplest way.

Choose your time zone, user name and password and let the system install.
After you have a running system you can add the other users.

(As you can see from the responses there are many opinions about how
you should partition your drive.This is the hardest part of the whole
install for a newbie which is why I suggest choosing automatic partitioning.)

cheers
mick
jpete

Re: Install/partitioning advice for 250G drive?

Post by jpete »

Should I do anything different if I expect most of the five profiles to all be logged on and in hibernation at the same time? :D

I have 1.5G of RAM. Is a 3G swap acceptable under the above conditions?

Can I increase it later?
mick55

Re: Install/partitioning advice for 250G drive?

Post by mick55 »

jpete wrote
I read Fred's threads and must admit, I so much of a rank amateur that I don't follow them.
That is why I tried to give you a simple solution -- use the entire hard drive and let Mint
make the decisions for you.

jpete wrote
Should I do anything different if I expect most of the five profiles to all be logged on and in hibernation at the same time?
Uhhmmmm.....unfortunately it doesn't quite work that way.

Suspending a computer is like putting the computer to sleep. The computer will still be turned on and all of your work will be left open, but it will use much less power. You can wake the computer by pressing a key or clicking the mouse.

Hibernating is turning the computer off completely while saving the current state of the computer (such as keeping all of your open documents). When you turn the computer back on after hibernating, all of your work should be restored as it was before hibernation. No power is used when the computer is hibernating.

Shutting down is turning the computer off completely, without saving the current state of the computer. No power is used when the computer is shut down.

Resuming is bringing the computer out of a power saving mode and back into normal operation. You can resume the computer from being suspended by pressing a keyboard button or by clicking the mouse. You can resume from being hibernated by pressing the power button on your computer.

Your swap partition needs to be equal to, or more than your RAM to allow hibernation.

You can also add a swap file or hibernation file later on if needed.

It is possible to have a swap partition as well as a hibernation file.
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