Partitioning my hard drive

dxtrpn · 2011-10-03 04:35:12

I'm installing Arch Linux, and I'm hung up on partitioning my hard drive. I'm running a 2007 Acer Aspire M1641 Desktop (x86-64) with a 320 GB hard drive and 2 GB of RAM. This machine will be used for web development, and maybe to run a web server from home. Do you have any thoughts or advice you'd like to share on partitioning a hard drive? Specific examples would be particularly useful.

RichAustin · 2011-10-03 08:15:49

My setup is pretty simple and works fine on HP G72 500Gb laptop with 3Gb RAM. My installation notes say:

Mount Point       Label          Size           Type
==========================
/                         archRoot    15-20Gb     Ext4
/boot                  archBoot    32786        Ext4
/var                    archVar       8-12Gb      Ext4
/home                archHome   40Gb         Ext4
Swap                  swap            3Gb          Swap

I tend to setup with the higher figure in the suggested ranges i.e. / would be 20Gb, /var 12Gb. /boot I've never to be honest been sure about the size but I found 32786mb suggested somewhere or other and it seems to work okay. No idea where I read it, and besides you can miss out the /boot partition completely and Arch installs fine anyway.

I got the general partition sizes from a combination of reading up on the subject and letting Arch do a full disk install where it setup the partition sizes and then I made a note of what it did. It works fine me and that's good enough I reckon.

The /home partition obviously should be whatever you can spare but I don't need a huge partition since I mount a big data partition where all my music, documents etc. live.

dxtrpn · 2011-10-03 23:46:58

I see I see, very nice

KenjiTakahashi · 2011-10-04 00:06:37

Layout above is quite fine, but I tend to have bigger / and no /var. That's up to personal preference, I think.
Also there's no need for much space in /boot, because it will just hold kernel and grub. Mine has 16MB used ATM and I don't think it would grow any bigger.

RichAustin · 2011-10-04 13:51:07

KenjiTakahashi wrote:

Layout above is quite fine, but I tend to have bigger / and no /var. That's up to personal preference, I think.
Also there's no need for much space in /boot, because it will just hold kernel and grub. Mine has 16MB used ATM and I don't think it would grow any bigger.

I think I read somewhere that about 16-32mb was plenty so I went for 32mb. I wasn't 100% sure about the size of / but what I allocate seems to be plenty for what I need. /var is, as you say, personal choice but it would be created in the / partition anyway so I figured I may as well give it its own partition.

masteryod · 2011-10-07 11:32:08

as for boot partition 32MB is fine if you don't plan to install additional kernels, I'm testing linux-ck and my boot partition is using right now 30MB holding two kernels so third kernel wouldn't fit, personally I prefer bigger boot partition 64-128MB

Arch Linux

#1 2011-10-03 04:35:12

Partitioning my hard drive

#2 2011-10-03 08:15:49

Re: Partitioning my hard drive

#3 2011-10-03 23:46:58

Re: Partitioning my hard drive

#4 2011-10-04 00:06:37

Re: Partitioning my hard drive

#5 2011-10-04 13:51:07

Re: Partitioning my hard drive

#6 2011-10-07 11:32:08

Re: Partitioning my hard drive

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