1TB drive- how to set up separate /home & rest of space?

[geekomatic]

Hi all,

I've read through the rest of the posts asking about partitioning & what/how to do it. It seems most are dual-booting. I'm not.

I am using the entire 1TB for Mate 13, 64 bit. I'd like to have a separate /home partition as well as partition the rest of the drive for music, photos, & downloads.

I read one post where someone set up swap, /, /home, & then wrote, "I'll set up the other partitions as I need them". So, I guess my questions are: 1) how do you set it up in the first place if you wish to do so, 2) how do you create partitions later in unused space that show up under "computer" automatically at boot?

The last time I installed, it was to a smaller drive and I just had swap, /, /home. This time, I'm wondering if that's still okay- or should I have multiple partitions for individual use, as noted above.

Specs are:

Quad-core Q8200 @ 2.3
4GB RAM
AMD 1GB graphics
1TB Hitachi drive
DVD writer

I was thinking swap- 4gb
/ - 20gb- ext4
/home 50gb-ext4

which leaves roughly 975gb to partition for usage.

*Also (not really related)- why do people say to use gparted to partition when Mint does it during the install?

Sorry if this seems a dumb question- I just don't see it unless I missed something...?

Thanks!

[xenopeek]

GParted gives you more control than you have with the partitioner available in the installer. I usually do the same; boot from the Linux Mint installation USB, set up partitions with GParted, and then during installation of Linux Mint choose to do manual disk space allocation--and then just select the mount points for the partitions I already created with GParted.

If you want to create additional partitions later, you can do so by installing GParted. If you want to resize/move/delete existing partitions, you'll have to do that from the Linux Mint installation USB (as you can't modify partitions that you have mounted).

Once you have created a new partition, run the following command to find the UUID of the partition:

Code: Select all

sudo blkid

Create a mount point for the new partition, for example "disk2", and make it readable & writable to users:

Code: Select all

sudo mkdir /mnt/disk2
sudo chmod 1777 /mnt/disk2

Edit your /etc/fstab file (on MATE that would be gksudo pluma /etc/fstab):

Code: Select all

gksudo gedit /etc/fstab

At the end of this file add an entry like (where you replace 00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000 with the UUID the blkid command gave you):

Code: Select all

UUID=00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000 /mnt/disk2 ext4 defaults 0 2

Save the file and close it. Then run the following command to mount it now. It will be automatically mounted on future boots.

Code: Select all

sudo mount -a

And what I usually do is put my big files on a separate data partition, like /mnt/disk2 above, and then link relevant folders from my home folder there. For example on a new install I would make a Music folder on /mnt/disk2 (not needed on future reinstalls), remove the Music folder in my home folder, and link the Music folder in /mnt/disk2 into my home folder so all programs can find it there:

Code: Select all

mkdir /mnt/disk2/Music
rm -fr ~/Music
ln -s /mnt/disk2/Music ~/Music

[geekomatic]

Hi Vincent,

I ended up just making one, big /home of the space. I was in a hurry to try some other things & decided I can always go back & try it again later.

One thing I wanted to know- the instructions you gave- were they for "after-the-fact" creation of partitions in unused space? I had already installed when you wrote that. So, could I just simply make the partitions in gparted at the very start? If so, what's the best file system- assuming that possibly Windows might access it (my kids school laptops).

Cheers & happy holidays/2013!

[xenopeek]

Yes, these instructions were for mounting partitions created after already having installed Linux Mint.

[SurfaceUnits]

Hi Vincent,

I ended up just making one, big /home of the space. I was in a hurry to try some other things & decided I can always go back & try it again later.

One thing I wanted to know- the instructions you gave- were they for "after-the-fact" creation of partitions in unused space? I had already installed when you wrote that. So, could I just simply make the partitions in gparted at the very start? If so, what's the best file system- assuming that possibly Windows might access it (my kids school laptops).

Cheers & happy holidays/2013!

you'll want to make the shareable space for the chllren either ntfs or fat

[srs5694]

So, could I just simply make the partitions in gparted at the very start? If so, what's the best file system- assuming that possibly Windows might access it (my kids school laptops).

you'll want to make the shareable space for the chllren either ntfs or fat

You'd want to use NTFS or FAT only if the other OS/computer has direct access to the partition, as in a dual-boot configuration or if it's an external disk that you move between a Linux computer and a Windows computer. If the laptops will be accessing files on the Linux computer via a network tool like Samba, you'd be best to use a Linux-native filesystem on the Linux computer. On the other side, the Windows system won't know the difference, but on the Linux side, using a Linux-native filesystem is superior because you get better access to Linux filesystem features and superior filesystem repair and maintenance tools. You can't repair a broken NTFS volume in Linux, for instance, so when (not if) the filesystem isn't cleanly unmounted or has other problems, an NTFS volume on a Linux-only computer won't be repairable. FAT's better in this respect, but still not as good as a Linux-native filesystem.

[geekomatic]

I've had a lot of real life at my back...

wanted to say hi & thanks!

will most definitely get here as I can - great group, ty!

Happy 2013, everyone!!!!

:^)