How do you partition your machine?

[Zen]

Anyone running linux? if so which distribution? I'm thinking about installing a linux dualboot with xp to test. What would be the ideal way of setting this up in terms of partitioning?

If you dont use linux, what is the ideal partitioning setup?
On my existing A22 i've created a separate partition for programs, a temp partition for the pagefile, and several others for personal things and another for media and editing.

Thanks in advance.

[jdhurst]

I don't see any value in partitioning a working Windows system. There are so many different files that keeping some on partition and some on another doesn't seem to make sense any more. One exception: I see value in keeping virtual machines on a separate partition. That would keep them from overly fragmenting my host system (which they seem to do).

In answer to your other question, yes, I use Linux (I am in Ubuntu just now) but I find it more helpful to run Linux and other machines as guests within my Windows host (which is also running as speak doing mail).

On my desktop, these machines are on another drive. On my laptop, the machines are integrated into the Windows filesystem and I wish they weren't. I own Partition Magic, so maybe I will fix it someday (probably when my new Laptop with Vista and a *very* large hard drive comes along).
... JD Hurst

[Humpa]

Partioning makes sense to me, but it all depends on how you use your machine, and what you use or do for backups.

I remove the hidden partition, because I have an acronis image of my virgin Z60m from my first week. I seen no reason for wasted space on something that I would only use a last resort - I want a recent image if I have to do a restore, I don't want a virgin install/setup.
I also turn off Restore, because if there is some problem that requires rollbacks, I'd rather use my most recent image backup from before the problem - and again, this is something that is not likely to happen to me anyway, so why should I waste the space on my main drive?

I make a acronis backup of my C drive once a week. I have the first image saved (for emergency use only), and I also have the last few saved - but I save them on my home pc, and how many I save depends on how much extra space I have.
I only keep my OS, Program Files, etc on the C drive - all the normal OS stuff.
My documents and files and whatnot I keep on my D partition, and I have those backed up on my home pc too. Most of those files don't change, but the ones that do (like my work files, for example) I have in certain folders. And once a week I use acronis to create a differential or incremental backup of those (it just does a backup of the files that changed since the last backup).
I only do a full image backup of the C drive - there's no reason for an image backup of files. And keeping just the OS on the C drive cuts down on the size of my weekly image backup (right now those are only about 6gig's).

I use a spare drive in the ultrabay for my weekly C drive image backup, and also for the incremental backup of my important/changing files and folders that are on my D partition. That way I can even do a complete restore if I'm on the road (or even at work). I can't backup the whole D drive though - only my important/changing files and folders from the D partition, but I do have the rest of the files backed up at home.

This lets me use the complete 100gig's of my main drive, and not have to worry about ever losing anything. And I can even delete the backups on my spare drive if I need extra space for something - because I have the acronis backups/images saved at home as well.
Hard drive space is cheaper than it has ever been - and this method works well for me. And it takes very little time. The full C drive backup takes less than 10minutes, and the incemental file/folder backup takes about a minute, usually.

If I had my 100gig drive as one partition, I wouldn't be able to do this. That would just be a monster image backup every week.

[carbon_unit]

I removed the hidden partition because I made the restore cd's so I can put it back when i sell it.
I have about 10 gigs for XP, 15 gigs for my main Linux install, 10 gigs for a testing Linux partition, 512megs for a swap partition and the rest for a FAT32 partition to store files in that is read/writeable from all Operating Systems.

[Zen]

I think partioning also makes sense certainly in the sense of organising personal files from system files and just general smooth funtionning of windows.

On my older A22 i went as far as creating a partion just for program files, temp, pagefile, and of course personal things. It is a P3 with 256M of ram and I needed a max a performance as i can get.

With the Z60 which is considerably faster I'm not sure if i want to create as many partiitons. Perhaps keeping the program files and pagefile on C, then perso stuff in other partiitons. I know that perhaps there really isnt a huge performance advantage if the pagefile is on the same hard disk whether on a different partition or not.

I like what Humpa has done creating an image of the original config and I think i will also create the restore cd's as well and eventually wipe out the 5Gb hidden partition. What are the steps exactly to create the restore cd? I have to use a dvd?

[Geary]

To clarify and add to JD's post, by far the easiest way to experiment with Linux on your ThinkPad is to run it in a virtual machine instead of dual booting.

Go get the free VMware Player and take your pick from the prebuilt virtual machines and you'll be up and running.