Hi all. Recently I bought a new 60GB (56GB once formated) OCZ Agility 3 for one of my notebooks (Turion TL-64, 4GB RAM, Nvidia 7150m). I’m using it with Windows 7 till openSUSE 12 comes to life and I would like to get some ideas for dividing the disk between the 2 OSes. Now Windows 7 uses arround 22Gb so I might go with 28GB for each OS but I gues I could create 4 partitions: 2 for Windows (C and D) and 2 for Linux (/ and /home) but I could move the Windows profile to D and mount Documents under /home/user/Documents so I can use the very same directories under Windows and Linux saving a lot of space and sharing the same data between OSes.
Hi all. Recently I bought a new 60GB (56GB once formated) OCZ Agility 3 for one of my notebooks (Turion TL-64, 4GB RAM, Nvidia 7150m). I’m using it with Windows 7 till openSUSE 12 comes to life and I would like to get some ideas for dividing the disk between the 2 OSes. Now Windows 7 uses arround 22Gb so I might go with 28GB for each OS but I gues I could create 4 partitions: 2 for Windows (C and D) and 2 for Linux (/ and /home) but I could move the Windows profile to D and mount Documents under /home/user/Documents so I can use the very same directories under Windows and Linux saving a lot of space and sharing the same data between OSes.
What do you think?
Pancho
So, one thing I would suggest is to combine / & /home into the remainder of the disk so you might have something like this:
/dev/sda Load MBR with Grub (so it can start openSUSE / even though Windows is marked active)
/dev/sda1 PRI FAT Win7 Boot 100 MB (Marked Active for booting, Allows Service Pack Loading & Backup to work)
/dev/sda2 PRI NTFS Win7 Main 28 GB
/dev/sda3 PRI SWAP 2 GB
/dev/sda4 PRI EXT4 26 GB both / & /home
Thank you James! Simple ideas are the best! Since I want to mount c:\Users\user\Documents and the other user folders like Pictures, Videos, etc. over /home/user/Documents and so on it would be possible to assign less space to Linux partition and more to Windows. The reason for doing this is the Linux ability to read/write NTFS and the Windows’ complete disability to even read EXT3/4.
Maybe something like this
/dev/sda Load MBR with Grub
/dev/sda1 PRI FAT Win7 Boot 100 MB
/dev/sda2 PRI NTFS Win7 Main 36 GB
/dev/sda3 PRI SWAP 2 GB
/dev/sda4 PRI EXT4 18 GB both / & /home
Then I can make a mount --bind /windows/c/users/user/Documents /home/user/Documents, etc
I am not sure I understand what you are doing, but my idea is that yoy want to use non Linux files systems (from your Windows) permanently mounted as part of the Linux system.
While Linux is able to use non Linux file systems like NTFS to a certain degree (read/write) they are not Linux file systems and thus lack a lot of the functionality needed in Linux.
Thus only use NTFS and the like to exchange data with other (non Linux) systems (like the Windows that resides on the same hardware), but do not use it to store your everyday Linux files on them. Sooner or later you will run into problems.
Henk, thank you for your input. I know what you mean but bear with me, I have only 56GB and 2 operative systems! I know my idea is not elegant but it will work and sharing the same document space will save a lot of space.
I use Linux 99% of the time but I need Windows since I have a lot of work written in ASP. Since laptop is not my main system I can afford the increased probability of disaster wich even increased seems to be very low in my experience.
Anyway I will have in mind your suggestion and keep looking for the best possible solution,
Maybe a virtual machine would be a better fit. I develop Windows programs and simply run Windows in a VM (VirtualBox). If you don’t need to run high end Windows games this is IMO the best of both worlds solution.
On 10/27/2011 10:36 AM, gogalthorp wrote:
>
> Maybe a virtual machine would be a better fit. I develop Windows
> programs and simply run Windows in a VM (VirtualBox). If you don’t need
> to run high end Windows games this is IMO the best of both worlds
> solution.
That is my solution as well, both for running some Windows applications on my
Linux box and for some applications that will not run on my wife’s 64-bit
Windows 7 system. She has XP in a VirtualBox VM that is started with a desktop icon.
There is no need to abandon Windows 7 once you bought it.
It IS a very good system.
Note that openSUSE, once installed with applications, consumes typically no more than 5GB of storage, plus your data (home) and swap.
Windows7 on the other hand is very “disk hungry”, probably 20GB or something like that once installed with updates, swap and hibernation file.
Can be even larger with apps.
So linux part should be smaller. Much smaller i think. Considering you have only 56GB you will be probably quite space-constrained for data (you need separate partitions for data too).
Of course Virtualbox is good solution if you don’t need windows running on real hardware. Wine is another solution for running windows apps.
You can also use some kind of flash memory to install openSUSE to (SD or fast CF card using ExpressCard reader). It will be much slower, though.
I can’t edit my previous post any longer, but you can also use openSUSE using virtualbox on windows host of course. It depends on what you are planning to use more frequently.
openSUSE comes with Virtualbox drivers (guest additions) preinstalled.
Is there a problem with having three partitions? By default openSUSE offers three partitions, for Swap, / and /home. You could do without the /home, but then the personal data of your users is on the same partitions as the system. Thus when you want to do a new install, you will loose your personal data (well, you can backup and restore of course)), while having /home separate you can simply not touch it on next install and thus preserve it.
beacouse i have first partition win xp, second as storage, and i want to make some small just for open suse. During installation where to setup to use only two partitions as u said?
When the install shows the summary about what it is going to do, there is an item (I guess it is the first one) that tells you about what it wants to do about partitions. Click there and then you can do what you like, especialy when you use a button that has a name like expert or something like that.
What is swap space, couse it would be great if i install only in one partition. I would only using on laptop and desktop, only for surfing and writening, also mayb.some virtual xp… Can u said me how to chouse only one partition?
What is swap space, course it would be great if i install only in one partition. I would only using on laptop and desktop, only for surfing and writing, also maybe.some virtual xp… Can u said me how to choose only one partition?
SWAP is used like memory, if you run out of the real stuff and a place to store your machine state when you hibernate. It is most valuable on Laptops with limited resources that are more likely to hibernate. Since you only need 2 GB for most machines, I suggest you create it. While not ideal, it is OK to place the main / partition and /home together in one partition, which can pool limited space on small hard drives like a SSD. But, not having a separate /home means a clean install can not use your old settings and not all Linux upgrades work as well as it might be hoped. Don’t forget that a Single Primary Extended partition can contain many Logical partitions, all of which openSUSE likes. Loading the grub boot loader into the MBR (Master Boot Record) allows one to “boot” openSUSE from a logical partition and you can even keep the Windows partition as active in such a case.
ok so i put “2GB as swap”, and 30GB as “/” and “/home” on same partition. When i format disk i use NTFS or?
For / & /home, you should use EXT4 and SWAP is a partition type of its own. Anything else can be NTFS, but you can’t get openSUSE to create it. You can mount and use NTFS partitions with openSUSE, but you got to use Windows to create it.
NTFS is NOT a native Linux file system type. You it ONLY for exchanging data with Windows sytems and the like (e.g. cameras).
Allways use native Linux file systems (ext4 for openSUSE is the default and the best for openSUSE atm) fot Linux systems.