Partitioning your hard drive for multiple operating systems

Note: Do check out the hyperlinks in the post and use internet search for terms that you don't full understand. This whole scheme is a production of my idle brain and you can use it at your own risk.


The most crucial step while installing Linux is partitioning your hard drive. This is where most of the first time users end up loosing all their data. I had lost mine too ;). Don't worry I am not trying to scare you off. Its just that you need to be a little more careful and back up all your data before you proceed.
Most of the user friendly distros provide you with appropriate disk management tools for setting up your filesystem. What boggles the first time users is the invisibility of C: and D: drives that they have been so used to. Here they are referred to as /dev/sda1 and /dev/sda2 and some more alien symbols :P. Here is more information on the naming convention for partitions.  And here is  more gyan about primary and extended (or logical) partitions.
One more thing that is worth noting is that there can be a maximum of four primary partitions on a harddrive whereas there may be any number of logical partitions and most Windows OS boot from a primary partition only while Linux is capable of booting from logical partitions also.
Basic needs while installing a dual boot system may be

• obviously, being able to boot into both OS at will.
• access data from both OS.
• have space to install and try more distros.

This is a wikipedia article on UNIX / Linux filesystem hierarchy. A bare-bone Linux installation needs two partitions to work properly: root (/) and swap. With this said and done I would like to show my own partition scheme and then explain what made me do so.

My stable partition scheme - developed after months of tampering and reinstalling.

The screenshot is pretty much self explanatory, however, what needs a little bit of introduction are the following:

• Repository (NTFS) partition: One thing that the windows operating systems are famous for (apart from their baseless user-friendliness) is their proneness to crashes and viruses. One should prefer keeping data on a partition other than the one containing system files so that a reinstall of windows does not wash them away.
• Swap: This partition is used by all Linux / UNIX based operating systems for the purpose of paging. More info on Swap space is available here.
• Home partition: My idea of a separate and central home partition shared by all the Linux distributions is something that allows me to keep all my files on one drive irrespective of the location I OS I work from. And hence I do not have to hunt for files on different OSs when I need them. 
• The other partitions you see are the root partitions of different OSs that I tried followed by the free space available for me to try more distros ;)

Although its not much of a problem form me now a days but ext (or Linux partitions) can not be accessed from Windows. Although many tools are available for facilitating that, I didn't find anything that would work flawlessly. So one should refrain from storing files on the Linux partition that might be required while running Windows, otherwise switch over to Linux completely.

This is something I found to be a stable configuration for my harddisk partition scheme and the idea is an independent production of my idle brain after months of wondering and tampering and re-installations. Hope this helps a troubled soul lost in the fromatting dilemma finding peace and decide on a partitioning scheme.

There shall be more posts on easily and successfully how I configured a multi-boot system.