help for partitioning for dual booting

Hello!
Let me start by saying this is my first time in trying Linux and the whole dual booting thing (= NOOB). Before I actually do the real installation, I wanna ask for your opinions about my partitioning scheme. I want to dual boot the pre-installed Vista in my laptop (Dell Inspiron 13) and Ubuntu or Linux Mint 6. I have a 320 GB hard drive with 4GB of memory, running Vista Home premium 64-bit OS.

Checking the disk partitions through Vista, this is what I get:
http://i37.photobucket.com/albums/e60/askalle/vistapartition.jpg
I'm confused. Does that mean I have 2 partitions or 3? I'm confused about that 39 MB Healthy part.

Anyway, if I had 2 partitions, I had 2 plans in mind, with some help from some other guy's partition scheme and psychocat's guide. Feel free to correct the order of my partitions, I'm sure I got that wrong.
A)
1- Primary Vista NTFS 50 GB
2- Primary / (root) ext3 20 GB
3- Primary extended
4- logical /home ext3 20 GB
5- logical swap 6 GB
6- logical shared data (ntfs or ext3?) the rest of GB
4- Primary(?) Recovery (pre-installed Dell thing)

B) this one I like more but I'm not sure what to do about the Recovery partition
1-Primary Vista NTFS 50 GB
2- Primary File storage and/or /home (NTFS or ext3?) the rest of GB
3- Primary / (root) ext3 20 GB
4- Swap 6 GB

So if I do go with plan B, should 2 (File sotrage and /home) be NTFS or ext3? If I go with ext3, I'm just gonna install FS-driver in Windows so I could read and write into that partition from both OS (following psychocat's partition guide). Would you recommend this?
Also if I do use FS-driver, when do I install it? Before or after partitioning? or before or after the Linux installation?

Replies would be appreciated. Thank you!

 

The only reason you need to dual boot is if you are a gamer. Otherwise, installing windows as a virtual machine using virtualbox is the solution you desire.

 

Cut your "/" from 20GB to 10GB (max you would EVER need is 15GB, I have a bit of software installed and I am currently at ~6.5GB)
Cut your SWAP to 2GB or 3GB.

Linux Partitions cannot be NTFS, I would recommend ext3 or ext4. I would never recommend writing to Linux from Windows, and use reading sparingly if you must. If you want to share files between the two OS's create a NTFS data partition for both to use since Linux can read/write NTFS easy.

 

I'd go with less partitions if you're new to linux, it will be less confusing. On the other hand it might make sense to make a separate /home so that you can use it on windows without having your entire linux filesystem mounted.

If you can put up with a bit of overhead, using a virtual machine is definitely the way to go but it's not great for anything CPU or GPU intensive.

 

Your hard drive is fairly large for an OS drive so I would create 4 partitions.

Thus, there would be four primary partitions (max. you get) with the 4th one broken down into logical partitions.

So:

1. Vista – 50 GB - NTFS
2.XP – 50 GB - NTFS
3.??? -50 GB (free) - NTFS
4.into Logical partitions

Ist one can be swap – 2GB

2nd one can be Linux – 15 GB - ext3

Space used: 167 or approx. 170 GB

As you can see, there is a lot of space left so you could use the rest for VirtualBox and/or more Linux distros if you wish.

I agree with the other guys that you could use VirtualBox but since you are just starting/learning, it might be nice to have one partition dedicated to Windows (Vista?) so that if you run into any obstacles, you can just go to that Vista partition as you try to work out the 'Virtual' issue. It's just a thought.

I recommend the 4 partitions since you only get 4 primary partitions and that way, if you suddenly wanted the extra primary partition, it's already there. The drive partition setup will look neat and tidy that way. Even if you don't use the other primary partitions right away, they're there and you still have plenty of space.

If you don't plan on using XP ever, you can modify as desired. It's just an idea.

I highly recommend getting an external drive, either one built that way or an internal and place it in an enclosure, for your data. That way, any Operating System trouble can be easily solved by re-installing and you don't worry about effecting any data. Not that you expect to re-install constantly but to me, it is convenient to not worry about my data whenever doing anything with my main partitions and/or operating systems.

 

Yes....here is what I use:

/(root) 12 GB (current usage is 6.39 GB)
/swap 2 GB
/home (rest of drive with Linux file system, not NTFS.

They'll probably need to be logical parititions...doesn't matter....

plus, you can share directories with Windows....for example, when I launch Exaile in Slackware, my music directory it scans is:

/vista/Users/john/Music

and so on and so forth....just haven't moved everything over to Slack yet.

 

right now i have

/ 6GB NTFS 4GBswap file + 2GBtemp storage
/ 50GB ext4 ubuntu
/ 60GB NTFS windows 7
/ 120GB NTFS shared space

i have to keep my windows 7 partition (for now) because my Volar MAx USB TV Tuner doesn't play nice with linux, needs windows if i want to watch TV... other than that, i always boot into ubuntu, and use Wine or (i have a Vista virtual machine on VirtualBox) for any windows applications

will try to play around in ubuntu to see if the usb tv tuner can be connected to the windows virtual machine and watch tv there.. or not

and virtual machines: cache+actual memory usage goes over my 4GB ram, and spills a few megabytes onto my swap file... nothing to worry about yet

 

Thank you for the replies everybody!
I am still reading up on other links and studying all the possible options I have. The thing is, I want to dual boot because I'm planning to slowly ease into Linux and I'm using Windows-specific software that is not performing that well in WINE.
I'm not so sure about Virtualbox. Would it be better to use Virtualbox or Wubi? I have read that using Linux this way decreases performance. I will try check up on them though!

Anyway, after thinking about it, I have changed my partitioning plan into something like this:

1- recovery (not sure how much space this takes, i will post a screenshot of what gparted from the livecd will show)
2- vista NTFS 50GB
3- / ext3 20 GB
4- extended
4a- logical Swap ext3 4GB
4b- logical Shared data ext3, the rest of my space (to be mounted in /home/(username)/data

I've decided not to make a separate /home partition and just leave it as it is in the /.
Now I'm still confused regarding partition 6, the one for the shared data. I want vista and whatever linux distro i choose to be able to access these files (probably docs, mp3s, jpgs, psds, your basic stuff). Should I be better off with NTFS or ext3? What is the difference if I use either?
Thank you very much everyone!

EDIT: I have also heard about doing a Wubi installation and then upgrading that wubi installation into a full (or dualboot?) installation with LVPM, as in this.
http://lubi.sourceforge.net/lvpm.html
Would you recommend?

 

So I went into Gparted using Linux Mint 6 LiveCD and this is what came up. I'm afraid I have 3 partitions :-/

Which would mean more research again...

If I find a way to delete the Dell Utility partition though (and i think it's possible since I have the Windows Installation Disc), how about this partition plan?
1-Recovery NTFS 14.65 GB
2-Vista NTFS 60 GB
3-Shared data NTFS the rest of the space
4-Extended: 4a- / (root) ext3 20 GB, 4b- Swap ext3 4 GB

If I can't delete the Dell Utility partition and leave it as it is, would this be ok?
1-Dell Utility 39.19 MB
2-Recovery NTFS 14.65 GB
3-Vista NTFS 60 GB
4-Extended: 4a- / (root) ext3 20 GB, 4b- Swap ext3 4 GB, 4c- Shared data NTFS the rest of the space

 

I would turn what you have labeled as 4c into /home. Shared NTFS is a waste (it's just a vista partition which doesn't leave you that much for /home in Linux), and you'll appreciate having a separate /home if you need to reinstall and want to keep all your settings, etc.

EDIT: If you need that vista partition for loading up games then do it that way...but remember, to linux it's ALL shared space...you don't need a separate partition for it.

 

@theZoid, i wanted to create a separate data partition that both linux and ubuntu can access and since linux can read/write to ntfs, i figured it would be better to make that partition ntfs.
Right? :-/

 

Welllllllllllllll I did that once and ended up turning it over to linux The big deal here is having a separate /home....you need to take that one on faith....having the separate ntfs partition might help you segregate data and files that are shared, but will probably be a D:/ drive in Vista. Nothing wrong with this.....but I really would separate out your /home...most linux installers even expect this. Your root / doesn't need to be over 12 gigs, swap at 2 gigs is big...then you can squeeze more to /home logical partition.

You're thinking OK.....as you use linux your priorities will evolve, probably like the rest of us

 

Alright, i changed it around and I decided I didn't want to touch the Dell Utility and the Recovery partitions. Would it be okay to do this, then -

1-dell utility fat16 39.19 MB
2-recovery ntfs 11.64 GB
3-vista ntfs 50 GB
4-extended:
4a logical- / (root) ext3 12 GB
4b logical- swap ext3 4 GB
4c logical- /home NTFS leftover space

Hopefully, this is decent now. :-S

 

The /home is part of the linux file system and can't be NTFS....so you need to divide that up.....i.e. so much ext3 to /home, and give the rest to Vista (or Linux, which can access and write to it)

 

Oh yeah! Ok...

Alright, i changed it around and I decided I didn't want to touch the Dell Utility and the Recovery partitions. Would it be okay to do this, then -

1-dell utility fat16 39.19 MB
2-recovery ntfs 11.64 GB
3-vista ntfs 50 GB
4-extended:
4a logical- / (root) ext3 12 GB
4b logical- swap ext3 4 GB
4c logical- /home ext3 15 GB
4d logical- data NTFS leftover space

 

double post, sorry

 

that'll get ya started

 

Thanks so much everyone!
Hopefully, the install will be ok.