I have just built my own PC I have previously only owned laptops so I’m after advice on the best options for my setup.
I have Windows 10 on its own ssd and plan to install opensuse on its own and I also have one for storage.
whats the best way to utilize this drive for both systems? do I have to partition the drive so its half NTFS and half Btrfs?
should I do this before installing opensuse on the ssd? or is it ok to do the formatting after allowing me to install opensuse
and have a play around first? and finally should I put the Home folder on the storage ssd?
sorry for the probably very basic questions I’ve only used ubuntu on laptops before and just need a few pointers in the right
direction
Hi and welcome to the Forum
So what method of booting are you using, legacy (MBR) or UEFI on this setup, what size are all the drives?
To share with windows I imagine it will be either ntfs or exfat…
I normally use 40GB for operating system with btrfs and no snapshots. Swap size will be dependent on whether you wish to suspend the system. For home it’s normally off on a xfs partition, but I use a data partition (with softlinks to ~/) and leave /home on btrfs.
I’m using UEFI to boot I have a 250 Gb for windows and another 250Gb for linux the one to be used for storage is 1Tb.
So I suppose the way to go will be to partition the drive with exfat/ntfs ( I got this, I can look this one up)
and the other half xfs and I can do as you do with softlinks
This is like asking which color of a rainbow is best. You won’t get a consensus, particularly without saying anything about how much you’ll be using each OS compared to the other, or what activities you’ll be doing on each.
do I have to partition the drive so its half NTFS and half Btrfs?
This is really 2 or 3 questions:
How much to allocate to each OS’es own native filesystem, if both
Which Linux native filesystem should be used, if any
You could do half and half. The the same question to do what with and how much in each OS applies.
should I do this before installing opensuse on the ssd? or is it ok to do the formatting after allowing me to install opensuse
and have a play around first?
Either is fine.
and finally should I put the Home folder on the storage ssd?
If you mean your primary /home content, by so doing your SSD space will probably be at least 80% wasted. The OS can utilize as little as well under 10GB. The minimum recommended for BTRS is 40GB, about twice as much as for EXT4. If you were to utilize double the BTRFS minimum your freespace would still remain above 2/3 of the total.
Note that Linux can access NTFS for both reading and writing, though not with anywhere near the performance as with a native filesystem. If all you’re going to do with your data drive is save and watch movies, NTFS for the whole drive should be perfectly adequate. OTOH, the more you allocate to Linux native filesystem(s), the less opportunity Windows has to corrupt your data.
I use a broadly similar set up. With Windows 10 and Tumbleweed installed on a partitioned ssd and my data set up on a standard hard drive. The hard drive is formatted as NTFS and both systems work from this fine.
Well the /home directory should never live on a home partition that is not formatted with a Linux compatible FS. Since NTFS does not support Linux permission bits and the permissions are faked at mount this can lead to many problems. You of course can mount a NTFS formated partition somewhere in the /home directory but the basic users home /home/someuser must use a Linux FS so that files there have proper permissions.
