Partitioning help - dual boot Windows 7 / Linux Mint MATE

[blueinca99]

I have just removed Robolinux using 'Boot-Repair-Disc' - very easy, & have replaced it with a genuine Windows 7 & then added Linux Mint "Rosa" Mate as a dual-boot (32 bit, PC is Intel® Celeron(R) CPU E1400 @ 2.00GHz × 2, Internal HD Western Digital 1TB, Memory 2.0 GiB).
My issue is that Mint seems to run slowly using the internet - for example side scroll bars are not ready to be moved when the page loads, it just generally feels sluggish. What is interesting is I can download files very easily & quickly - big video HD broadcast files seem to download painlessly & quickly. I think I need help to change my partitions set up.
I see some people recommend having a 'backup' partition where they store a system image, have a separate data partition for storing documents, photos, videos etc (thereby keeping the OS & data separate). I am just interested in how much space I should be attributing to Windows 7 (I will be mainly using it for Video Redo (which can't be used successfully in Linux), & how much space for the Linux OS given I have 1 TB HD.
I save files mainly to an external HD, but would like the flexibility to access & edit files using either Windows or Linux - so need a shared read/write solution too - thinking something like 'EXTFS for Windows'?.

Main issue is really to sort out the partition sizes (is it possible if I haven't setup the partitions sizes adequately for Linux that this is what is causing it to run slowly on internet?). I am a newbie with regards partitioning.

Many thanks in advance of any help,
Paul

[cwsnyder]

You don't provide your browser or habits in browsing, which can affect your browser response more than your Internet connection or your HDD partitioning. If you are using Chrome/Chromium or Firefox and in either case have 6+ tabs open in your browser when you open it up, I don't know anyway to speed up your browser response other than to add more RAM. You should definitely have a 2 to 4G swap partition, also. 2G RAM is getting to be tight to run a browser with more than about 4 tabs open at any time in Firefox or Chrome/Chromium, especially if one partition is running a video stream.

As far as partitioning, 80G each should be plenty for Windows 7 and Mint Mate and all needed applications. If you have an external HDD, you might store a system image on the external drive, but a second copy on the internal HDD would be as likely to be compromised by whatever damaged the first copy. And if your HDD failed, both copies would be gone. I have a 1.5T internal HDD and I set up a 300G /data partition formatted EXT4 for Linux, but I don't run Windows and do run multiple Linux systems. To simplify the setup, I would have 100G NTFS partition for Windows 7, 40G partition for Linux Mint Mate / (EXT4?), 56G partition /home (EXT4), & 4G swap partition. The remainder I would split between a 400G NTFS partition for Windows data and 400G EXT4 partition for Linux data. If you must have a shared partition, it would pretty much have to be an NTFS partition, because all of the Windows programs to give access to EXT type partitions are for read-only access, especially with journaled EXT3 or EXT4 data. NTFS or one of the FAT file systems are the only ones to which both Windows and Linux have both read and write access, while partitions larger than 10 G using FAT have poor granularity with about 16K as the smallest allocation block space, IIRC.

[blueinca99]

thanks cwsnyder - thanks for a very informative reply.

[blueinca99]

partition setup screenshot attached

[Mark Phelps]

You claim that Mint is running "slowly on the Internet", but then, you say you can download large files very quickly.

So, clearly, there is no speed problem with accessing the Internet from Mint.

What you're describing is a display issue, which results from default video drivers in use instead of those designed to optimize the performance of your video card. These drivers would cause the screen to lag during browser functions, while having no affect at all on file downloads.

You should tell us all what video card/chipset you are using.

[blueinca99]

Intel(R) GMA 3100
InternalIntel(R) G33/31 Express Chipset family
Driver version 8.15.10.1749