What is Partition?
A partition is a contiguous set of blocks on a drive
that are treated as an independent disk. Using partition
a single hard drive can be divided into many logical
drives.
Why Partition?
There are number of reason to have
multiple partitions on hard drive few of them are as
below:
To achieve
higher security of data in case of failure (either
through system failure, power failure or user error)
probably you would loose data on single partition
not in all; this is most important reason for partitioning.
Data can be grouped and separated
so that it can be managed. It increases disk space
efficiency.
Reduce time require to perform
file system check at the time of boot-up as well as
manually by fsck command (i.e. if I know my /usr partition
had problems then I can fix it by first unmount it
from the file system, then perform file system check
and after repairing again mount it to the file system.
No need to boot system in maintenance mode).
You can also mount file system
as read-only so that data on that partition cannot
be changed by anyone, even not by root.
This can be useful for higher security
of data.
You can also limit the growth of
data on varying partition. So that system hang-up
can be avoided.
Partitioning
Hard Drive
Installing Linux on single partition or one root partition
including data partition and a swap partition, still
it is possible to get perfectly functioning system.
But multiple partitioning would advantage more; you
would like to install Linux with multiple partitions.
Let us see mount points and file system information,
which gives better idea of how to define partitions
and it’s size for your own needs:
/boot
This is where your kernel images stored. This partition
would allow booting and then loading of whatever drivers
are required to read the other file systems. The size
of this partition can be as small as a couple of MB;
the partition type should be Linux native.
/ (root)
The root file system is represented by /. It is the
top of the directory tree, and contains Linux and everything
that you install with Linux. It store things like temporary
files, the Linux kernel and boot image, important binary
files (things that are needed before Linux can mount
the /usr partition). You must create a partition for
the root directory. Type of file system for / partition
is Linux native.
The size of your root
partition will vary depending on what you install or
plan to install. Check your distribution's documentation,
and reserve enough space for a maximum installation,
plus space for temporary data and installation of new
software. If you plan to try out lots of software, leave
more space.
/home
This is the place where all the user-specific files,
in other words your data, are stored. On a multi-user
system, user’s directory stored under /home. Partition
type should be Linux native.
It is not necessary to create a separate partition for
/home. If you do not create it, it will reside on the
root partition like everything else. Advantage of creating
a separate /home partition is that if system requires
reinstalling Operating system, or you'll just want to
reinstall with different options, or try a different
Linux distribution, having /home on a separate partition
makes it very easy to wipe out and reinstall Linux without
losing any of user's data.
swap
You need one partition that will be used as Linux swap
space. This is space on your hard drive that can be
used as virtual memory. Virtual memory allows your computer
to run large programs and perform complex tasks even
if it does not have enough physical RAM to do the job.
More than one swap partition can exist on a drive. If
you have more than one physical hard drive in your system,
you can create multiple swap partitions. This can improve
the performance of swapping by taking advantage of parallel
disk access. Type of this partition must be Linux swap.
Now, you may have question that what will be the size
of swap partition? If you are beginner then choose size
of swap is double the amount of physical RAM installed
in your system. If your system is high graphics system
or multi user system with lot’s of users and process
or it is processing multimedia then it is recommended
that you should go with more size may be in 2 GB or
more.
/usr
This should be the largest partition, because most of
the binary files required by Linux, as well as any locally
installed software, web pages, Squid proxy cache, Samba
share services, some locally-installed software log
files, etc. are stored here.
If this partition is created with more space than, it
is not required to give more space to /(root) partition.
The partition type should be left as the default of
83 (Linux native).
/var
This file system contains spool directories such as
those for mail and printing. In addition, it contains
the error log directory. If your machine is a server
and develops a chronic error, those messages can fill
the partition. Server computers ought to have /var in
a different partition than /.
Size of this partition is depending on server requirement.
/tmp
Some programs write temporary data files here. Usually,
they are quite small. However, if you run computationally
intensive jobs, like science or engineering applications,
hundreds of megabytes could be require for time to time.
In this case, keep /tmp in a different partition than
/.
So now you are ready to install Linux in your system.
Choose partition according to your needs. If you still
having any doubts then I prefer that partition your
hard drive into main four partition /(root), /usr, /home
and swap. |
