Reinstalling, what should the minimum size be?

[Wurm]

Hi all,

I've got a 60GB drive, that has to boot between Windows and Linux. My Windows install has a bad case of WinRot, so I'm going to blow it away when my exams are over. I'm a big gamer, so I'm planning on keeping a large partition for the games (30GB-50GB in FAT32 so I can play using WINE too), but how much do I need for the two OSs? I've got 8GB set up for my Ubuntu install, which I haven't come anywhere close to filling (I don't think), 1GB of swap, 2GB file transfer with the rest left to Windows.

Specs: Pentium M 2GHz, 1024MB RAM

What I'm thinking to do is breaking it down like this:
60GB
4GB Linux
1GB Swap
5GB Windows including the MS swap file
50GB Games

Is that going to be enough for the OSs? I'm installing Macromedia Studio 8, and PaintShop Pro 9, along with the usual apps and utilities (Office mainly), but my install is so bloated right now that I have no way of telling just how much I'm liable to need :/

Also, does anyone have any recommendations for anti-virals? I'm running Norton Antivirus 2003, but it's old and about to go off subscription. I've heard good things about NOD32 but I've never met anyone that I know that has used it.

[je_fro]

Why 1GB swap? I'd never use more than 256MB on a modern rig, no matter what. The 2x<memory> rule is 10 years old.
Otherwise, looks good.

[happybunny]

seems a little thin to me....a full blown RH install (heaven forbid) is more than 4gigs.

Hard to tell, but my Windows XP is 12.5G, but some of that is a few games, but not 7gigs worth of games.

do you really have 50 gigs of games to install? I know Quake is HUGE, but i would give more to my OS's if I were doing it.

However, my base debian install is around 256megs (not counting X).

[Wurm]

I don't have 50 GB of games, currently I've got about 22, but I'm leaving room to grow :)

I suppose I could drop 10 GB out of games and drop it into the two OS partitions, then I'd have lots of room.

As to why I've got a 1GB swap partition there: I'm hoping to get a hibernation/sleep mode working with my laptop, won't I need the partition for that? Or can I swap into a file like XP's hibernate function?

[teeitup]

What about a /home file system?

With your config your home will be included in your 4GB Linux filesystem. Space will be a problem right off the bat.

I'd make the 50GB my /home. This would provide for the maximum flexibility. You could have a "games" directory in your home directory or outside of it.
or
take at least 10GB and make it /home

This method is handy if you have to/want to reload or try another distro. The /home filesystem can be used without having to be recreated with all of the data intact.

Good Luck,

[Wurm]

Well since I'm only using 2.4GB of the 8 I've allocated to / (and /home is on the same partition) I'm not too worried about size issues.

I would put all the games on a linux partition, but they're Windows games (some of which don't play nice with WINE) so I'm going to have a shared partition to keep them accessable to both OSs.

60GB
...9GB Linux
......4GB /
......5GB /home
...1GB Swap
...10GB Windows
...40GB Games

I'm don't know if I'm going to need all that space for games, but with the sizes of them going up and up I don't want to be left wiithout enough space. And if I do run out of space on either of the OS partitions I can grab some from games easily enough, even if I have to reinstall the games.

[pyrael]

WOW! I have 160GB and my CCRMA (FC4) is starting to complin about space!

Maybe I should switch!! LOL

WHen I *did* have dual boot on my box I had about 10 gig for XP, but that's because of the updates etc..

I wouldn't go with a 1GB swap either (Unless you do ALOT of heavey processing like me)
you can probably get away with 512.

I'd (personally) go with:
8.5 GB win (512 extra for swap)
8 GB linux
512 MB swap
3GB /home (so you don't get locked up someday)
40GB FAT32

also, If the laptop supports installing extra drives, I'd set up the linux partitions on an LVM so that I could increase HDD space easily later on.

Like this:
hda1 : Fat 32 : 8GB
hda2 : /boot : 100MB
hda5 : swap : 512 MB
hda6 : LVM : 11 GB
/ 2GB
/usr 6GB (or just / 8GB)
/home 3GB

This way if you install a second drive you can just add it in.

[serz]

Why 1GB swap? I'd never use more than 256MB on a modern rig, no matter what. The 2x<memory> rule is 10 years old.
Otherwise, looks good.
Ditto.. 1gb swap is way too much, 512ram is more than enough..