[Fresh Vista Install] Help with partitions...

When following the bloatware removal guide, it says to rewrite Vista over the C partition thus leaving Media Direct alone.

Now my question is, how can I also create a separate partition for future Linux purposes, and how big should that partition be? I have a 320GB drive in my XPS M1530.

Thank You!

 

To manage and create a new partition, here you go:

Start->Run->Administrative Tools->Computer Management->Disk Management

Its really up to you to decide how big you want it to be. You could have three partitions, one with windows, one for storage, and one for linux. Or you could have one for windows and storage, and another for linux.

If you are more into windows, I recommmend creating only two partitions using Windows as primary storage and vice versa for linux. Though if you use both equally, use a third partition as a storage partition that you access with both windows and ubuntu. How big you choose to make it is dependent on your usage. If you use it a little, make the partition 5 GB more than the partition you install it on, you can always shrink/expand partitions freely.

 

But when doing a fresh install, how do I create the three separate partitions?

One for Windows and Storage.
One for Ubuntu or some other type of Linux (20GB enough?)
Leave the Media Direct Partition Alone

 

"Now my question is, how can I also create a separate partition for future Linux purposes, and how big should that partition be?"
For linux, I suggest you to create an extented partition of 20 gb(20 gb should be enough, you can go 30 gb to feel more comfortable thou).
Then, separate the extended partition into at least 3 logical drives: one for /, one for /home and one for swap(personally I have 4: /, /var, /home, swap).

"One for Windows and Storage.
One for Ubuntu or some other type of Linux (20GB enough?)
Leave the Media Direct Partition Alone"
You can even delete Media Direct Partition, so you can use Media direct button to boot linux.

I suggest:

Primary partition: 30-40 gb windows (NTFS)
Extended partiton: 20-30 gb linux
-15-25 gb for / (ext3)
-1gb for swap (swap)
-the rest /home (ext3)
Then the rest for your files (NTFS)

 

Is there a guide of some sort that explains why you separate it into 4 logical drives the way you did?

 

Yes, but I can't find it, so I will explain myself.

linux's folder organization is linux a web site.
You have "/", the root folder (much like C: in windows).
Then, under /, you have /usr, /home /bin and blabla(like c:/program files c:/Document and Settings ....).

The difference with windows, is that instead of mounting disks like C:, D:. Linux mount a disk like a folder.
Let's say you have 2 partitions.
One must be /, but the other one, linux can mount it as /home, or /usr, or /bin.

In other words:
Windows mounts disks as: disk1=C:, disk2=D:, E:
Linux, translated to windows' words, mounts disk like: disk1=c:=/(or root folder), disk2=c:/program files=/usr, disk3=c:/Document and Settings=/home

Generally I suggest at least /, swap, /home
/: mandatory, you need a partition to be the root parition.
swap, same thing(it's for disk swapping )
/home: /home is the folder where linux store user's settings (desktop wallpaper, default web browser, font sizes, blablabla). Keeping /home on another partition means that you can format / whenever you want (like if you have destroyed the whole kernel by accident...) without losing user's configuration files (so you can format and recover your old wallpaper).

And some can add:
/var: where linux store cache file. Some distributions linux debian store by default downloaded installing package at /var. So, if you broke your system, you can format /, without touching theses packages (so you wont have to re-download them).

There are other partitioning option, but for most people it starts to be pointless.