partition question!

ftornell · 2009-11-30 19:37:49

Hi guys,
Have read a bunch of threads here about partitioning but have a few more questions.

I have two harddrives in my server and 4 GB of RAM

1x 250 GB
1x 1,000 GB (1TB)

[250 GB Drive]
/ - 10 GB ext4
/boot - 50 MB ext2
/var - 10 GB ext4
/usr - 50 GB ext4
swap - 4GB
/home - rest of the space ext4

And the big disk (1TB) i want to use as a DATA drive with movies, photos and music!

Is my partition layout ok or what to change?

And how should i mount the data drive? /home/user/Data
?

Last edited by ftornell (2009-11-30 19:38:41)

jelly · 2009-11-30 19:51:52

ftornell wrote:

Hi guys,
Have read a bunch of threads here about partitioning but have a few more questions.
I have two harddrives in my server and 4 GB of RAM
1x 250 GB
1x 1,000 GB (1TB)

[250 GB Drive]
/ - 10 GB ext4
/boot - 50 MB ext2
/var - 10 GB ext4
/usr - 50 GB ext4
swap - 4GB
/home - rest of the space ext4
And the big disk (1TB) i want to use as a DATA drive with movies, photos and music!
Is my partition layout ok or what to change?
And how should i mount the data drive? /home/user/Data
?

/usr is a bit big i guess, but this depends on how many programs you install

.:B:. · 2009-11-30 20:05:26

5 GB max for /var (unless you like your pacman cache to build up until eternity). I don't see the use of splitting out /usr on a modern-day system that won't run anything off a LAN (like a thin client or sth).

Unless you'll do suspend to disk, there's no need for 4 GB RAM and you'll be fine with 256 MB even, you have to do a lot to max out 4 GB of RAM.

ftornell · 2009-11-30 20:07:07

Ok, how about the big disk then, shall i mount that as as a data folder inside my homefolder or is there another way of doing it that is better?

ssl6 · 2009-11-30 20:12:14

I do something maybe similar, with a large drive, used for movies though only. but for the movie drive, i made a folder in /home to mount it to, and adjusted permissions to my needs. if you need your data drive accessible to multiple users, that may be the best way, but if its only for youself, you can mount it under your user folder

but here's my layout

/dev/sda3                           49G   25G   22G  53% /
/dev/sda1                                         46M    16M    28M  36%      /boot
/dev/sda4                                         639G  291G   316G  48%    /home
/dev/mapper/Movies-lvm_movies        1.8T   722G   1020G  42%  /home/movies

mind you, my system drive is on a 750gb, then i have an LVM spanned on a pair of 1Tb's.....so most of my data, music, pictures, other misc shared folders are on the 750gb, and i have lots of space left. only movies

now my setup may give you a better idea, i'm not sure. its more or less the default layout, though i don't use swap, my 4gb ram is more than enough, since i only use about 700mb anyway. but the nice thing with the default-ish layout, is that you're drive isn't split up all kinds of sideways hindering any kind of expansion when you run out of space in one partition, easier to just have a large partition, so making it hard to overfill with one thing.

now unless there's a specific need for having your 250gb split up the way it is, I would try to avoid that, at least on a single drive anyway. especially since they're all using ext4. I could see having a seperate var if you were using reiserfs or something, and seperate boot is always handy. and ideally wouldn't swap be at the start of the drive? unless you just listed your partitions as you thought them out

edit// B seems to raise some good points about splitting /usr, as well as var, and maybe swap as well

Last edited by ssl6 (2009-11-30 20:21:03)

JuseBox · 2009-11-30 21:09:18

I just throwing my 2 cents out there.

I have a 500GB drive for now will eventually upgrade but this is what i did. i have 8GB of ram so no swap either.

/root = about 80GB
/var = 5GB
/boot = 50MB
/home = the rest of the space.

Since im the only user on my pc i can store everything i need locally in my home folder ei Music Videos and so on. And nothing is mounted anywhere else... Hope it helps!

stim · 2009-11-30 23:39:03

JuseBox wrote:

I just throwing my 2 cents out there.
I have a 500GB drive for now will eventually upgrade but this is what i did. i have 8GB of ram so no swap either.
/root = about 80GB
/var = 5GB
/boot = 50MB
/home = the rest of the space.
Since im the only user on my pc i can store everything i need locally in my home folder ~/Music & /~Videos and so on. And nothing is mounted anywhere else... Hope it helps!

I used to store all my data (pics, movies, music) on my home partition too, but there are issues with it. Allot of stuff likes to store conf files in your ~ , and this can become problematic if you want to mount the data across multiple OS's. Mounting it as /home/ will lead to all your conf files following you, and in some cases causing crashes when you use different versions of a given program. The logical workaround of mounting it somewhere else just bothers me.

YMMV but my best practice is a partition to dump that crap mounted in your favorite place (/mnt/ ftw) and symlinks in /home/ to point to your stuff.

Arch Linux

#1 2009-11-30 19:37:49

partition question!

#2 2009-11-30 19:51:52

Re: partition question!

#3 2009-11-30 20:05:26

Re: partition question!

#4 2009-11-30 20:07:07

Re: partition question!

#5 2009-11-30 20:12:14

Re: partition question!

#6 2009-11-30 21:09:18

Re: partition question!

#7 2009-11-30 23:39:03

Re: partition question!

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