How should I partition new WD 640GB

I just got my hands on a brand new WD 640GB Caviar Green hard drive today and to me honest… I dont know what the heck to do with all this space… space… space!
Space the final frontier, Earth: Final conflict, Earth 2, Star Trek II The Wrath of Khan… Err um anyhow what are your suggestions for me on this thing?
I am thinking of committing 20GB or so to Root at least, leave a good percent to home, and 2 GB for swap…
But even that i will still be having a lot of space… space… space!
Inner space, outer space, subspace, time and relative dimensions in space!
At this rate I am thinking of getting a copy of Windows 7 to have a laugh with so that all this space… space… space wont go to waste!

The installer will suggest 20GB for root 1,5GB Swap and the rest for /home . With that space you can rip lost of shoutcast and icecast streams. Download open movies legally like Big Buck Bunny ( he is great ). Write books, save pictures from your digital camera. There are many things to do with that space.

Expand your horizons, dual, triple, quad boot a few distros. Maybe get into BDS, Solaris, or the like.

I got a great deal on the WD10EADS 1TB version of this drive, will have similar “problem” soon.

Are you going single drive or want to use 2 effectively? If so splitting off /var (particularly) and putting it on the other drive should speed some things.

Rather than a 20GB /, I’d rather divide things, so can run with barrier=0 on /tmp say, and use noatime on /usr. You can afford to over provision areas used for /, /tmp & /var; so they’re mostly free space; whilst having /usr (& /opt) proportionately more full and only written during updates.

I don’t like over-sizing /home, because if you do your disk arm will have to move further, as files will be distributed all over the disk.

So I create seperate jumbo partitions for large backup, media files and ISO’s (xfs for compatability with older releases or ext4).

A useful way to use 4.3GB or so is to keep the DVD Iso file on your disk, loop back mount it and add it as a repository (export via NFS if you have other clients).

Planning to test 11.3 by having an 8GB “next release” partition will let you test releases & upgrade smoother in future.

On 2009-11-24, TaraIkeda <TaraIkeda@no-mx.forums.opensuse.org> wrote:
>
> I just got my hands on a brand new WD 640GB Caviar Green hard drive
> today and to me honest… I dont know what the heck to do with all this
> space… space… space!
> Space the final frontier, Earth: Final conflict, Earth 2, Star Trek II
> The Wrath of Khan… Err um anyhow what are your suggestions for me on
> this thing?
> I am thinking of committing 20GB or so to Root at least, leave a good
> percent to home, and 2 GB for swap…
> But even that i will still be having a lot of space… space… space!
> Inner space, outer space, subspace, time and relative dimensions in
> space!
> At this rate I am thinking of getting a copy of Windows 7 to have a
> laugh with so that all this space… space… space wont go to waste!

I assigned 32 GB to the root partition. Too much really, but it allows to
put the ISO of the install DVD in there. Then, you can remove the DVD from
the repositories and add the ISO, with the same priority. So every time you
install something, it won’t ask for the DVD, without getting everything from
the Net.

With all that space, why not make your swap a big larger? I’ve put 8GB n
mine, because I had a rea case than swamped my 2 GB swap, before.

Of course, you could consider setting a chunk of that disk asside to perform
backup on. won’t protect you from a disk crash, but you’ll have a backup in
case you erase something…

Best solution: buy a second one, make the first /home and the second
/mnt/backups. :slight_smile:


Any time things appear to be going better, you have overlooked
something.

Of course, you could consider setting a chunk of that disk asside to perform backup on. won’t protect you from a disk crash, but you’ll have a backup in
case you erase something…

That is a reason not to put 4.3GB ISO files in ‘/’ partition. Far better to have it in a seperate partition with other big download files you can replace, or media stuff you can re-rip.

Suppose you need to re-install for some reason? Now the installer will want to re-mkfs / and you’ll have to ‘backup’ the ISO file, when it could just have been in a seperate partition, where data ought to be.

Congrats on getting YaST to use the local ISO file, for some reason it didn’t work for me, and would ignore it, falling back to download from net oss repo. I’ve had to use the loop back mount method locally, which at least lets it be exported via NFS.

Consider making a grub partition if you multiboot - it takes much of the hassle out of it.

Making a Dedicated Grub Partition

Here’s a df output sample, if it may give you a clue about how space is used. That machine has 2 WD SATA harddrives 500 GB (in fact 465 GB).

  • bold : fs used by OpenSUSE only
  • blue : fs used by Ubuntu only
  • red : fs shared by both.

I would format / in ext3 for legacy Grub (some people would prefer a separate small /boot) and everything else in ext4.

The good news is that newer Linux ata modules have lost the 16 device limitation. You can now see more than 16 partitions on SCSI/SATA harddisks.

For openSUSE, create a /local partition, link /local to /usr/local, put there all the stuff (like some programs, themes, fonts) that you want to keep when you update/reinstall. Do not reformat that partition in future installations.


# df -hl
Filesystem            Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
**/dev/sdb6             4.1G  563M  3.4G  15% /**
udev                  2.0G  624K  2.0G   1% /dev
**/dev/sdb7              16G  7.6G  7.4G  51% /usr**
/dev/sda10             35G  401M   32G   2% /home
**/dev/sdb8             6.0G  618M  5.1G  11% /var
/dev/sdb9             7.9G  213M  7.3G   3% /local**
/dev/sdb10            124G   83G   41G  68% /srv
/dev/sdb11            4.0G  146M  3.7G   4% /tmp
/dev/sda1             251M  178M   74M  71% /local/mnt/c
/dev/sda11             32G  302K   29G   1% /local/mnt/bsd/opt
/dev/sda12             64G  9.7G   49G  17% /local/mnt/bsd/srv
/dev/sda13            7.9G  1.1G  6.5G  14% /local/mnt/bsd/share
/dev/sda14            7.9G  311M  7.2G   5% /local/mnt/bsd/home
/dev/sdb12            119G   36G   77G  32% /local/mnt/bsd/src
/dev/sdb13            113G   28G   80G  26% /local/mnt/bsd/data
/dev/sdb14            6.0G  2.0K  5.7G   1% /local/mnt/bsd/home2
/dev/sdb17            4.0G   22M  3.8G   1% /local/mnt/bsd/tmp2
/dev/sda15            4.0G   84M  3.7G   3% /local/mnt/openbsd
/dev/sda16             16G  3.8G   12G  25% /local/mnt/openbsd/usr
/dev/sda17            4.0G  216M  3.6G   6% /local/mnt/openbsd/var
/dev/sdb15            7.9G  664M  6.9G   9% /local/mnt/openbsd2
/dev/sdb16            2.0G  3.5M  1.9G   1% /local/mnt/openbsd2/var
/dev/sda18            4.0G  298M  3.4G   9% /local/mnt/freebsd
/dev/sda19            4.0G  139M  3.5G   4% /local/mnt/freebsd/var
/dev/sda20             16G  5.7G  8.9G  40% /local/mnt/freebsd/usr
/dev/sdb18            4.0G  129M  3.5G   4% /local/mnt/freebsd2
/dev/sdb20            4.0G  292K  3.7G   1% /local/mnt/freebsd2/var
/dev/sdb21             16G  370M   15G   3% /local/mnt/freebsd2/usr
/dev/sda21            4.0G   97M  3.7G   3% /local/mnt/netbsd
/dev/sda22             16G  5.1G   10G  34% /local/mnt/netbsd/usr
/dev/sda23            3.9G  115M  3.6G   4% /local/mnt/netbsd/var
/dev/sdb22            7.9G  706M  6.8G  10% /local/mnt/netbsd2
/dev/sda6             3.1G  498M  2.5G  17% /local/mnt/ubuntu
/dev/sda7              16G  5.9G  9.1G  40% /local/mnt/ubuntu/usr
/dev/sda9              16G  242M   15G   2% /local/mnt/ubuntu/usr/local
/dev/sda8             6.0G  574M  5.1G  10% /local/mnt/ubuntu/var


# swapon -s
Filename                                Type            Size    Used    Priority
/dev/sda5                               partition       2096440 0       -1
/dev/sdb5                               partition       2096440 0       -2


For other space related issues, maybe that
wikipedia.org - Star Trek LCARS terminal (adlc) | userstyles.org might help you see the final frontier. :wink:

On 2009-11-24, robopensuse <robopensuse@no-mx.forums.opensuse.org> wrote:

> Rikishi42;2075680 Wrote:
>>
>> 32 GB to the root partition. Too much really, but it allows to
>> put the ISO of the install DVD in there. Then, you can remove the DVD
>> from the repositories and add the ISO,
>>
>>
>> Of course, you could consider setting a chunk of that disk asside to
>> perform backup on. won’t protect you from a disk crash, but you’ll have
>> a backup in
>> case you erase something…
>>
> That is a reason not to put 4.3GB ISO files in ‘/’ partition. Far
> better to have it in a seperate partition with other big download files
> you can replace, or media stuff you can re-rip.

I don’t put it in the / directory, of course. It’s sitting in a /ISO directory
of the / partition.

> Suppose you need to re-install for some reason? Now the installer will
> want to re-mkfs / and you’ll have to ‘backup’ the ISO file, when it
> could just have been in a seperate partition, where data ought to be.

I didn’t say I threw the DVD away. If I need to re-install, I’ll just use my
DVD. And once the system is running, I can allways make a new ISO with dd.

I don’t believe in creating too many partitions. Over the years, I’ve learned
that the more partitions you have, the more leftover space you have left and
right. Pure waste of volume. I will create a separate /home, but that’s all.

Besides, what if the ISO changes? Say that some day an 8GB DVD is published,
as it was in the days of openSUSE 10.0? I’d be stuck with my 4.3GB
partition.

I can also put other ISO’s in that /ISO dir. Some even for oter distro’s or
releases. That way I can share them over nfs, for the benefit of my old
laptop, which has nor DVD (only CD), neighter enough HD space for it’s own
ISO images.

> Congrats on getting YaST to use the local ISO file, for some reason it
> didn’t work for me, and would ignore it, falling back to download from
> net oss repo. I’ve had to use the loop back mount method locally, which
> at least lets it be exported via NFS.

ISO works fine in this release. I used the loop in earlier versions.
It’s important that you define the priority correctly.

I suggest defining the ISO before removing the DVD, so ou can copy it’s
priority settings.


Any time things appear to be going better, you have overlooked
something.