Partitioning of installation media

Partitioning of installation media

For Linux beginners, we recommend to create only two partitions (root/home and swap) because this makes a first installation much easier. After the installation, additional data partitions or, if desired, a separate /home can be created.

However, we do not recommend to create a /home partition.
The directory /home should be the place where individual configurations are stored, and only them. A separate data partition should be created for all other private data. The advantages for data stability, data backup, and also in case of data recovery are immeasurable.

A swap partition has a similar function as the Windows swap file, but the former is far more effective. As a rule of thumb, the swap partition should be twice as large as the RAM used. This applies mainly to notebooks that are to be hibernated via hibernate or desktop computers with very little RAM (1 GByte or less). Devices with sufficient RAM no longer need a swap partition.

For data exchange with a Windows installation, the designated partition should be formatted with NTFS. siduction can read from and write to such a partition with the automatically installed ntfs-3g.

There are many good ways to partition your disks. These examples should give a first insight into the possibilities.

Purchasing an external USB hard drive for regular data backup is also worth considering.

Minimum requirements

The minimum requirements for the reasonable use of a siduction installation are:

Examples with different disk sizes

If a dual boot with MS Windows™ is created, MS Windows must always be installed as the first system onto the hard disk.

“GPT” should be selected as partition table type. Thus, you can use the advantages over “MBR”. Only with old hardware, “MBR” is still useful. The explanations for this can be found on our manual page Partitioning with gdisk.

The examples refer to partition tables of the type “GPT”. It needs the first two, very small partitions in order to function.

Dual-boot with MS Windows and Linux

1 TB hard disk:

120 GB hard disk:

80 GB hard disk

Linux alone

500 GB hard disk:

160 GB hard disk

60 GB hard disk

Partition editors

• GParted: an easy to use partition editor with a graphical interface
  Gparted is available on all siduction installations and installation media equipped with a graphical user interface. It supports a number of different partition table types. The manual page Partitioning the hard disk with GParted provides more information about the program.

• KDE Partition Manager: a Qt based, easy to use partition editor with a graphical user interface
  The KDE Partition Manager is the standard partition editor for the KDE Destktop and as comprehensive as Gparted.

• gdisk / cgdisk: a console program for partition tables of the type GPT - UEFI
  gdisk is the classic text mode program, while cgdisk has a more user friendly ncurses interface. The manual page Partitioning with gdisk provides more information about the program.

• fdisk / cfdisk: a console program for partition tables of the type msdos - MBR
  Note: fdisk should only be used for old hardware that does not support GPT - UEFI.
  fdisk is the classic text mode program, while cfdisk has a more user-friendly ncurses interface. The manual page Partitioning with cfdisk provides more information about the program.

Caution
When using any partitioning software, there is a risk of data loss. Always back up important data to another disk in advance.

Mounted partitions (also swap) must be detached before editing.
You can do this by entering to following command as root:

# umount /dev/sda1

To mount a swap partition, use this command:

# swapoff -a

Further information

Here the comprehensive english documentation of GParted

For more partitioning options see:

• Logical Volume Manager LVM partitioning

• partitioning with GPT to support UEFI Partitioning with gdisk