best way to partition a (brand new) drive?

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pooklaroux
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best way to partition a (brand new) drive?

#1 Post by pooklaroux »

This isn't strictly speaking a "puppy linux specific" question, but since I figure you all must have multi boot systems -- I might as well ask...

I broke down and bought a 40G hd for the thinkpad. The husband wants me to put win98 on one partition, but I don't really want to waste a lot of space or time on it ,and I certainly don't want to have to fight it for control of the boot sector...

Eventually I will probably want to install another version of linux, probably debian or something like that. I am sure it will want it's own partition.

Could you suggest a good partition strategy for this situation? And how would you go about installing things? Some people say "load win98 first, load it in the primary partition" and then other people say "no -- that's the absolute worst thing you could possibly do!" So I'm confused again.

For everything I have read so far, I probably want to use grub over lilo. But i haven't even made a decision about that.

I really need to get on with at least making the partitions and formatting at least one, so I can keep pup001 someplace.

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ezeze5000
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#2 Post by ezeze5000 »

Windows generally wants to be the first OS on the drive.
Win98, if you don't plan on using it for much, you could get away with a 2gb partition.
This leaves the rest of the drive for other OS's.
Making another Fat32 partition for your pup file and to share files between OS's is nice too.
You can use puppy to set your partitions, and a DOS boot disk to format the Fat32 partitions.
If you are a little low on ram a swap partition is helpful.

Look here for more help.

http://www.murga.org/%7Epuppy/viewtopic ... mat+drives

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Lobster
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#3 Post by Lobster »

great advice which can also be found here
http://puppylinux.org/wikka/HardDiskInstall

also check
http://puppylinux.org/wikka/HardDriveInstallBruce

(great piece of advice in the original post - I updated the links from the old wiki)

My advice for what its worth is run Puppy from a renewable rewriteable CD. That means you only have to cater for two distros. Then have a partition in the Linux distro or a folder in Windows or a new partition for saving all your Puppy work.

This is what I do. I have Debian Ubuntu on the HD as a reserve. I practically never use. The last time I just upgraded it and then left after browsing - something Puppy does perfectly.

I have run from HD and find the slight boot up improvement is the only advantage - BECAUSE (sorry for shouting - got a bit excited) Puppy runs from RAM - so whether it comes from HD or CD does not matter. Puppy runs as fast from CD as from HD . . .

The rewriteable CD's I have found to be reliable. Others burn a new copy and give the old one away . . .
Something to consider :)
Puppy Raspup 8.2Final 8)
Puppy Links Page http://www.smokey01.com/bruceb/puppy.html :D

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Flash
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#4 Post by Flash »

I'll second what Lobster says. I haven't found any reason yet to install Puppy to the hard drive. It boots so quickly from CD that it hardly makes any difference. Booting from the CD makes upgrading much easier. Since Puppy is changing fast, that is something to consider.

I've taken it one step farther. I run Puppy from a multisession DVD and don't even have a hard drive in the computer.

anaconda
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partitioning.

#5 Post by anaconda »

If I was you
I would make 3 primary partitions and 1 extended partition (with 1 logical partition)

1. 50MB primary partition for grub (ext2)
2. 6GB partition for windows98 (fat32)
3. 14GB partition for Puppy (ext2)
4. rest ~20GB to a logical partition (fat32)

First make the partitions with cfdisk from puppy:s command line You have to be root for this.

Code: Select all

cfdisk /dev/hda  
then format partition 1

Code: Select all

mkfs /dev/hda1
assuming you are installing to your first (IDE) hard drive.

Then install windows 98 to partition 2

Then install Puppy to partition 3

then install Grub to the first partition, and if needed add puppy and win98 to grub:s boot list. (edit "menu.lst")

The reason that grub should have its own partition is that:
Part of grub is installed to mbr, but the rest is (usually) in your linux-partition in /boot directory. and if/when you delete your linux (to install new one or whatever..) the grub is lost too and your computer can't boot any longer.. But if you had the grub in its own partition there is no problems...

And I would make a 6GB partition for win98, because anything smaller will be filled completely quite fast.. (office-pack yms..)
___________
anaconda

Foxti
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From What i ahve found

#6 Post by Foxti »

I run that same type of configuration you are running on one of my hard drives that is only 40 gig What I did was this

Partition 1 Windows 98 10 Gig
Partition 2 ext2 with puppy 15 gig
Partition 3 Linux swap this makes puppy applications run faster and smoother on older systems or systems that do not have a lot of memory Plus there is a utility available for 98 to access the ext2 partition but not ext3 or swap.

Now you have 2 choice You can use Grub or win98 to boot the system I have had better luck with grub then with 98 boot. however it will work either way


For best results however I have found that a very small partition formated fat 16 About 256 meg (if you need a 6.2 dos boot disk you can get them at bootdisk.com) then boot puppy up and create your ext2/3 partition I made mine 37 gig and then create a linux swap partition with the rest of the drive. THis is very nice for doing any development in Puppy and also fantastic if you are goign to do any custom builds of puppy using Unleashed etc. It is my favorite configuation of all that I have. Mind you I am very new to Linux but I love learning with puppy and have made a lot of progress in the last month using puppy to learn form as if I screw it up I can rebuild it in a mater of min as well as if I do somethig dumb I can boot from the cd fix what I did and then go back to normal.

Hope this helps

HaJo
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Re: best way to partition a (brand new) drive?

#7 Post by HaJo »

pooklaroux wrote:40G hd .. Could you suggest a good partition strategy
Maybe I'm too cautious: to avoid potential problems with the 8 GB Limit,
I use a scheme like this:

* Partition 1: 510 MB Small System = Puppy
* Partition 2: 7.5 GB Big System, = C: Windows, System & Programs
* Partition 3: 255-510 MB Swap
* Partition 4: (extended = rest of HD)

* Partition 5: xx GB Data = D: user-data for windows
* Partition 6: yy GB Data = /home user-data for linux
* Partition 7: 5-10 GB /usr = Application-programs
* Partition 8: zz GB BigFiles
* Partition 9: (at least) 1 GB FAT32 = accessible from all systems

Partition 1 and 2 are both within the safely bootable first 8 GB of the disk.

Swap: 250 MB should be enough in general, some advice to make it up to 2*RAM

User-data (="Documents and settings") and /home: for your "own" documents,
small enough for convincient backups (e.g. burn to CD or DVD).
When the user-data is on an extra partition, it ist also easier and safer
to change/upgrade/restore the system-partition.

BigFiles: Media-files, such as music, videos etc.
They normally don't change, so no need to back then up more than once.

/usr: On a "big" linux-installation, this should be 5-10 GB for programs.
This is where the bulk of the software gets installed.
With /home and /usr (and maybe also /var and /tmp) out of the way,
the root-partition of a linux-installation can be very small, say 50 MB.
For Puppy, such an extra /usr is not necessary.

The last partition should have a common filesystem such as FAT32
for transfering files, e.g. in case windows uses NTFS and linux uses ext2 or ext3
where the other system cannot read or write to.
Should at least be big enough for one CD-image + some small stuff.
If one of the above partitions already is accessable from both systems,
this is also not necessary (but maybe nice to have as a reserve)

Sizes for xx, yy, zz and number of "bigfile"-partitions obviously depend
on diskspace and individual plans, wishes and needs :-)
-HaJo

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