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I am about to do a fresh install of Ubuntu 14.04 LTS release. I had Ubuntu 14.04 and installed emerald, and now I am unable to get the unity nor I am able to access my data. Only option left was to do a clean install again. Thankfully, I do have my data on another laptop. That raised a question how should I do the partitions and data security.

I always partitioned my 500 GB Hard-Disk as below:

  • 500 MB - /boot
  • 50 GB - /
  • 450 GB - /home
  • 4800 MB - swap

Data I kept in /home:

  1. Install applications like sublime-text, hadoop, intelliJ, eclipse, oracle-home manually
  2. Lot of Media stuffs like - Songs, Movies and Wallpapers
  3. Lots of books, documents and office stuff

I also install many applications/libraries using Synaptic

I also keep playing with my distribution and sometimes that leads to broken system and I have to do clean install again. And this might result in data loss.

Therefore, I need to know how to to below:

  1. How should I ideally partition my data
  2. How should I implement data security and backup of /home and softwares installed manually as well as through Synaptic. I do work on development projects and data keep adding on.
Gaurav Dighe
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1 Answers1

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Your current system partitions looks good enough. However I cannot comment on the space you have allotted for /home. As a quick suggestion, instead of having 450GB in single partition, have that segregated into multiple partitions. So you can have different volumes for your work. With this, your operations become local to that particular volume and the other is not affected.

For backing up, you can use simple dd and create images. Or you can also use rsync!

http://manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/precise/man1/dd.1posix.html

In order to achieve encrypted filesystem, you should have a look on this!

HowTo

BDRSuite
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  • You said - "Instead of having 450GB in single partition, have segregated into multiple partitions. So you can have different volumes of work". Please explain this on what exactly should I do with simple example. And would you suggest to save backed-up images in seperate drive(what size should I allocate)? Also suggest on how to backup softwares? – Gaurav Dighe Oct 27 '14 at 06:28
  • Having 2 partitions of 200Gigs and 250Gigs in /part1 and /part2 will help to organize things better. Even if we mess up with /part1, data stored in /part2 will be unaltered. HTH! For dd images, you should follow this thread http://askubuntu.com/questions/537012/dd-image-size-does-it-equal-the-size-of-the-partition – BDRSuite Oct 27 '14 at 06:34
  • I am completely new bie in this.200GB of /aprt1 and 250GB /part2. Means what exactly should I do while installing Ubuntu. – Gaurav Dighe Oct 27 '14 at 06:36
  • Well, you should choose custom partitioning and proceed the installation. Here is detailed explanation of How to custom partition the ubuntu http://askubuntu.com/questions/343268/how-to-use-manual-partitioning-during-installation – BDRSuite Oct 27 '14 at 06:38
  • Sir I know custom partitioning using Disks/GParted.So you suggesting that 500MB for /boot, 50GB for / and 200GB and 250GB. But this will create /home in /(50GB Partition created). Therefore what should be my mount points for 200Gb and 250GB partitions. – Gaurav Dighe Oct 27 '14 at 06:40
  • @GauravDighe Your current partition looks good. However, it is my suggestion to have two partitions which will look like this!

    500 MB - /boot, 50 GB - /, 250 GB - /home, 200GB - /part1, 4800 MB - swap.

    where /part1 is a new partition

     – BDRSuite Oct 27 '14 at 06:46
  • Ok there I see. Means part1 will contain the backup images or data backups or something else?

    Sorry for these many questions. I actually used Windows 7 with 4 partitions 1 Partition only for Windows while data resided in other partitions. Therefore, if i have to reinstall the OS, my data was kept secured.

     – Gaurav Dighe Oct 27 '14 at 06:48
  • Yes, you can even use part1 for images/backups. – BDRSuite Oct 27 '14 at 06:50
  • it shows i can create only 4 partitions – Gaurav Dighe Oct 27 '14 at 07:48
  • Let us continue this discussion in chat. – BDRSuite Oct 27 '14 at 14:34