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Best Hard Drive Set Up For A New Linux Box?

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  Best Hard Drive Set Up For A New Linux Box? Steve <tinker123@gmail.com> - 2012-05-20 05:57 -0700
    Re: Best Hard Drive Set Up For A New Linux Box? J G Miller <miller@yoyo.ORG> - 2012-05-20 13:06 +0000
      Re: Best Hard Drive Set Up For A New Linux Box? The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> - 2012-05-20 19:02 +0100
        Re: Best Hard Drive Set Up For A New Linux Box? David Brown <david.brown@removethis.hesbynett.no> - 2012-05-20 23:19 +0200
          Re: Best Hard Drive Set Up For A New Linux Box? Robert Riches <spamtrap42@jacob21819.net> - 2012-05-22 04:28 +0000
            Re: Best Hard Drive Set Up For A New Linux Box? David Brown <david@westcontrol.removethisbit.com> - 2012-05-22 09:40 +0200
          Re: Best Hard Drive Set Up For A New Linux Box? Stan Bischof <stan@worldbadminton.com> - 2012-06-01 17:22 +0000
            Re: Best Hard Drive Set Up For A New Linux Box? David Brown <david.brown@removethis.hesbynett.no> - 2012-06-03 19:12 +0200
              Re: Best Hard Drive Set Up For A New Linux Box? J G Miller <miller@yoyo.ORG> - 2012-06-04 01:01 +0000
                Re: Best Hard Drive Set Up For A New Linux Box? David Brown <david@westcontrol.removethisbit.com> - 2012-06-04 09:37 +0200
                  Re: Best Hard Drive Set Up For A New Linux Box? J G Miller <miller@yoyo.ORG> - 2012-06-04 14:46 +0000
                    Re: Best Hard Drive Set Up For A New Linux Box? David Brown <david@westcontrol.removethisbit.com> - 2012-06-05 09:18 +0200
    Re: Best Hard Drive Set Up For A New Linux Box? Sam <sam@email-scan.com> - 2012-05-20 08:31 -0500
      Re: Best Hard Drive Set Up For A New Linux Box? notbob <notbob@nothome.com> - 2012-05-20 13:46 +0000
        Re: Best Hard Drive Set Up For A New Linux Box? Robert Heller <heller@deepsoft.com> - 2012-05-20 09:03 -0500
      [OT] Re: Best Hard Drive Set Up For A New Linux Box? James Moe <jimoeDESPAM@sohnen-moe.com> - 2012-05-21 12:43 -0700
        Re: Best Hard Drive Set Up For A New Linux Box? Sam <sam@email-scan.com> - 2012-05-21 16:48 -0500
    Re: Best Hard Drive Set Up For A New Linux Box? David Brown <david.brown@removethis.hesbynett.no> - 2012-05-20 17:41 +0200
    Re: Best Hard Drive Set Up For A New Linux Box? Bit Twister <BitTwister@mouse-potato.com> - 2012-05-20 17:18 +0000
    Re: Best Hard Drive Set Up For A New Linux Box? The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> - 2012-05-20 18:58 +0100
      Re: Best Hard Drive Set Up For A New Linux Box? Richard Kettlewell <rjk@greenend.org.uk> - 2012-05-20 19:53 +0100
    Re: Best Hard Drive Set Up For A New Linux Box? Danno <WhoaBaby@MySecretPlace.org> - 2012-05-31 12:01 -0600

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#5362

The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> writes:
> Steve wrote:

>> Any other advice on how to lay the partitions out?
>
> With a modern distro simply have one enormous partition. By the time
> you realise what you really need in partition terms if anything, the
> machine will be obsolete.

I would add: whatever you do, use LVM.  If you change your mind about
partitioning, LVM will make it that much easier to rearrange things.  It
will also make it easier to add more storage.  Also, don't forget to
take regular backups of anything you can't do without.

-- 
http://www.greenend.org.uk/rjk/

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#5440

On Sun, 20 May 2012 05:57:02 -0700 (PDT)
Steve <tinker123@gmail.com> wrote:

> I'm thinking of having a new PC custom built and then having Kubuntu
> 12.04 installed on the hard drive.
> 
> Shopping around, it seems like 1 TB hard drives are the norm.
> 
> I would also like to install a virtual machine on this new PC to run
> Windows for the occasional use where I just can't get something on
> Linux ( for example, streaming Netflix ).    I would also like to be
> able to experiment with the occasional "new" linux distro, without
> jeopardizing my main Kubuntu install or VM set up.
> 
> I know I should ask the PC builder to give me a swap partition ( how
> much on a TB hard drive? ).
> 
> Any other advice on how to lay the partitions out?
> 
> A friend at work suggested multiple hard drives, he said they could be
> set up so that I wouldn't have to dual boot.    Is there any values in
> this?
> 
> Thanks much in advance for any tips
> 
> Steve


I tend to give myself three "OS" partitions, one swap partition, and one
big data partition. That way, I can have one partition that is my stable
OS, one partition for upgrading to a new release (if I am inclined to
upgrade), and one partition for experimenting with any other OS. A 1TB
drive will be plenty of space to do that (FWIW, 2TB seem like the best
price-per-size value, here).

In the past, I've given myself about 10G per OS partition, and whatever
size swap brought my total RAM quantity up to about 2G, then make the rest
a data partition. But with a 1TB drive, you could go with much more than
10G, and still not lose a significant portion of your data partition.

Rather than divide the fundamental directories across various partitions
(in traditional UNIX fashion), I have subscribed to the "one big partition
for the whole installation" school for many years because, by and large, my
installations are just used as workstations, and if they crash for some
reason, it isn't a big deal to start over. I have learned the hard way to
keep my precious data (images, media, etc) separated from the main
partition. I use the ext4 filesystem for anything linux and haven't had an
OS-based corruption in a long time, but I still think it is good practice
to keep that data separate from your high-usage "OS" partition.

So, having gone through all that, for your circumstance, I'd likely
partition a 1TB drive like this:
Primary 1 = 20G
Primary 2 = 100G
Primary 3 = 20G
Primary 4 = 859G
Logical  1 = ~1G remaining for swap

Install Kubuntu on Primary2, and there is plenty of space left for your
virtual Windows install within that partition. Primary1 & 3 are available
for experimenting without damaging your stable partition. Primary4 is your
data partition. Take care to format that partition with a filesystem
compatible with VMware - the last time I used qemu, I had to build my
virtual drives on top of the ext2 filesytem. I don't know if such
limitations exist with VMware.

I am only vaguely familiar with qemu for virtualizing, and in order for a
virt Win to access other partitions under qemu, the data partitions have to
be served via samba, rather than have direct access to the partition. So,
in that case, that big data partition could be formatted with any
filesystem you wanted. The same may be true for VMware, but I can't
personally say.

OTOH, if you think you might install Windows on either P1 or 3, then you
likely want your data partition formatted using Windows' NTFS filesystem.
I'd say using this fs is generally frowned upon by the *NIX crowd, and I
personally wouldn't use it if the partition is not going to be directly
accessed by a Win OS, but ntfs-3g has been stable for me, allows me to use
USB drives across numerous workstations running various OSs.

Logical1, for your swap, is sized to taste. I run 3G of RAM on this system
(and I run it pretty hard at times), but it is rare for me to hit my swap
partition. I generally add a swap partition just because I've always had
one, and I *think* the kernel will offload low-priority processes to swap
space (someone knowledgeable would have to confirm that), but RAM is so
cheap these days, that I don't waste too much space on swap with new
systems. I'm assuming you'll be running a 64-bit OS, so RAM can be sized
way up without lightening your wallet significantly. The most RAM I run is
8G in a fileserver, none of my workstations exceed 4G, system memory has
never been an issue for me.

That's all I have to say about that.

-- 
Slackware 13.1, 2.6.33.4-smp, Core i7 920
GeForce GT520, RLU #272755

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