[vox-tech] recommended partition scheme for a dual boot windows 7/ubuntu machine?

[Alex Mandel]

On 11/03/2013 03:04 PM, Thomas Johnston wrote:
> I need to do a clean reinstall of both Windows and Linux and was wondering
> if the following partition scheme makes sense.
> 
> /dev/sda1    ntfs          150  GB  (for Win) (obviously a primary
> partition)
> /dev/sda2    ext2             1   GB      /boot
> /dev/sda3    extended   314 GB
>    /dev/sda5 ext4             35 GB      /root
>    /dev/sda6 ext4           267 GB      /home
>    /dev/sda7 swap            12 GB     /swap
> 
> 

On my nettop with SSD I have run /swap inside ram and set my swapiness
really low, but looks like I currently leave it on the SSD and instead
put my tmp into ram since swap almost never gets writes:
tmpfs /tmp tmpfs defaults,noatime,mode=1777 0 0

On my Laptop with SSD I used to have /swap slightly larger than ram
amount for hibernation (suspend to disk). Now that I only use sleep this
doesn't matter anymore. So in general I think your swap allocation is
way too big even if you have 12 GB of ram unless you plan to suspend to
disk.

I think the real keys to optimizing SSD usage is enabling Trim support
and changing your system swapiness, with 12 GB of ram (guess) you really
don't need swap.

I also do / and /home separate, 35 GB is plenty for /, I use about 12-16
GB with a ton of software installed. The exception is if you install
games or virtual machines, but if you do wine or steam you can just put
them under home. I have been happy with this split setup, as it lets me
OS upgrade separate of my data (Which I've done several times over the
life of the machine), or dual boot with the same data.

You might want to consider doing / and /home all under lvm so you can
adjust later if you want. Keeping /boot outside lvm is good especially
if you plan to do encrypted home or encrypted everything. Encrypted
/home is one reason to put it on it's own too.

Yes /boot as ext2 is slightly riskier, but it's also fairly easy to
recreate a /boot. If grub2 can handle it feel free to up to ext4.

Enjoy,
Alex

Out of practice installfest coordinator.