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I was partitioning my hard disk based on what I understood from this question.

This is the final result:

But I faced some problems here, I don't know which partitions should be primary and which should be logical, so I made /, /boot, /tmp and /home primary partitions and /swap a logical drive, is this right or wrong? I don't know because I'm new to Linux. Second problem, I want /dev/sda7 and /dev/sda8 to be NTFS and play role as D and E drives in Windows to put all my files on them (movies, games, music, etc.). But I don't know what I should choose in mount point for them.

This is the final result after partitioning the hard disk and the computer seems to be slow:

Please help me making the ideal or perfect partitioning to my hard disk.

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Mohamed Ahmed
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  • An ideal partitioning would be (afaik): A partition with (/), A partition with (/boot), a partition with (/home) if you want and swap. You can make them as a primary partition. – diamondburned Jan 18 '16 at 23:57
  • Why don't you have one partition for everything and a swap partition? It's way simpler. By the way there shouldn't be a "playonlinux" tag here. – Eduardo Cola Jan 19 '16 at 00:39
  • @EduardoCola sorry for using "playonlinux" it was a mistake , because I'm confusing and don't know what should I do. I'm a new comer from windows and the basic image or stereotype to me about hard disk is (C) for system (D) for my files (E) for my files and so on , but in Linux it's something differ for me and complected, so first: I want help from someone who can advise me about partitioning on Linux , Second: show me how this can done. – Mohamed Ahmed Jan 19 '16 at 08:57
  • @EduardoCola so you want me to do that : (/) Primary - (SWAP) and that's it , no /tmp , no /boot , no /home , and put all my data on (/) , but what if system crash – Mohamed Ahmed Jan 19 '16 at 11:47
  • ALL the needed directories will be under /. And if your system crashes having multiple partitions won't help. – Eduardo Cola Jan 19 '16 at 12:31
  • @EduardoCola OK make (SWAP) Primary or Logical and which file type should I use (FAT32 - NTFS - ext4) for SWAP and (/). – Mohamed Ahmed Jan 19 '16 at 13:01
  • The swap partition is formatted as linux-swap. And the root (/) is ext4. – Eduardo Cola Jan 19 '16 at 13:04
  • @EduardoCola OK I will tell you what I Understand it from you and you tell me It's right or wrong , My hard is 300 GB and MY RAM is 4GB you want me to make two partition only one for (SWAP) 8GB and Second for (/) will be for the remain space 292 GB and put all my data on it . and no /tmp, /boot, /home or anything else. is that true – Mohamed Ahmed Jan 19 '16 at 13:07
  • Please, understand that if you don't make /tmp, /boot or /home partitions they will be created automatically as directories inside your root (/) partition. This is the most easy way to do everything and maintainance is a lot easier. – Eduardo Cola Jan 19 '16 at 13:18
  • @EduardoCola OK now I will partition my hard disk to (SWAP) 8 GB Primary and (/) 292 GB as Primary ext4 is that good. – Mohamed Ahmed Jan 19 '16 at 13:28
  • Yes. Perfect. No headaches from low space in different partitions. – Eduardo Cola Jan 19 '16 at 13:38
  • In this case this will make my system slow or fast, and it will accept files from NTFS external USB hard drive. and I can make Virtual machine on the remain space (/292 GB) – Mohamed Ahmed Jan 19 '16 at 13:58

2 Answers2

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NTFS Partitions to share file with Windows

A couple of notes on what you seem to be doing:

  1. You are formatting sda7 and sda8 as Ext4 not NTFS. Windows will not be able to access this partition format. Why not leave this space Unallocated, unasigned to any partition and later create the NTFS partitions as you need them using a partition tool like GParted(can be installed from repositories).

  2. If you really want to create this Ext4 partitions you don't need to set a mount point for them. This will only mean they will not be automatically mounted when you boot up. They will be visible in the Files(Nautilus / Ubuntu's File Manager) as another hard drive you can access just with a click.

  3. You should be able to format these drives as NTFS from the get go. I am not certain how the menu on the installer works but you should format them as NTFS and not Ext4.

I would need to access an installation media to help you with more details. If you need more help with the steps let me know on a comment.

Partitioning in Ubuntu

In Ubuntu partitions are not assigned letters. Any partition that you create will be place inside the directory tree like another folder.

  • / is called the root. This is the lowest level in the directory tree.
  • /home/ is a folder directly under root that is generally used to store user specific data. You will have many subfolders: /home/username1, /home/username2/, /home/username3... These folders are created only for user that are real people; some users are used to run services(transmission-daemon) or are system specific(root). For these other user there won't be a home folder.
  • When you mount a disk in Ubuntu from the file explorer(nautilus) it will create a new folder under /media/. The folder name is not important, it will be generated automatically. When you unmount the disk the folder will be empty and if automatically generated also deleted (will not appear anymore).
  • I would suggest you turn sda7 & sda8 into NTFS formatted partitions and mount them at /media/somefoldernameyoulike. So that you can easily access them on every boot. These however is not requiered.

Your Case

I would suggest you do not create the /boot/ & /tmp/ partitions as you don't seem too familiar with the system. Create the /home/ partitions and make it bigger!. Your everyday files will generally be stored under /home/ partition.

Your swap partition should be as big as your ram memory in order to be able to activate hibernate at some point.

Good day.

Torrien
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  • OK , what can I do to help me? – Mohamed Ahmed Jan 18 '16 at 23:40
  • I would suggest you delete the partitions sda7 and sda8 and just create the two partitions for media after installing Ubuntu. Leave the space unallocated. – Torrien Jan 18 '16 at 23:43
  • @MohamedAhmed I was also wondering why are you separating the /tmp and /boot partitions. It is generally unnecessary. I do suggest creating a /home partition to keep any files there and avoid losing data if you ever try to do a fresh install. However, remember to make /home partition rather big as your users will probably keep most of their files in that partition. Unless you have a special need for /boot and /tmp partitions don't create them. They will just form part of the root partition /. – Torrien Jan 18 '16 at 23:50
  • @MohamedAhmed For a basic first install I always suggest you simply perform a simple install with just root / and swap. You don't need to compartmentalize the OS. – Torrien Jan 18 '16 at 23:53
  • I'm a new comer from windows and the basic image or standard view to me about hard disk is (C) for system (D) for my files (E) for my files and so on , but in Linux it's something differ for me and complected, so first: I want help from someone who can advise me about partitioning on Linux , Second: show me how this can done. – Mohamed Ahmed Jan 19 '16 at 08:53
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Torrien's answer covers a lot of important points. Here are a few more I'd like to add:

  • Linux doesn't really care about primary vs. logical partitions; you can set up a system with nothing but primaries, nothing but logicals, or any mix of the two you like (within the constraint that you can have no more than four primary partitions or three primaries plus an arbitrary number of logicals on a single MBR disk).
  • Modern computers (those introduced in mid-2011 or later) usually provide EFI firmware rather than the older BIOS firmware. Most EFI-based computers can boot using the older BIOS-mode boot loaders, but this is problematic for many reasons, as described on this page of mine. This is especially true when dual-booting. When booting in EFI mode, you're likely to use the GUID Partition Table (GPT), which supports up to 128 partitions, with no conception of extended or logical partitions. Thus, if you boot in EFI mode, the question of primary vs. logical partitions becomes meaningless. You may want to look into this issue before you head further down what may become a dead-end path.
  • Windows does care about primary vs. logical status on MBR disks. Specifically, the Windows boot partition (normally C:) must be primary. Sometimes Windows needs at least two primary partitions (the second is for a recovery partition). Of course, when booting in EFI mode from a GPT disk, this distinction becomes meaningless under Windows, as well as under Linux.
  • Your question implies that you'll be dual-booting with Windows; but your earlier question states that you will not be dual-booting with Windows. This detail is critical, because....
  • If Ubuntu will be the only OS on the disk, you should NOT use NTFS on the disk. There is no Linux utility for repairing NTFS partitions (the poorly-named ntfsfix utility only does very basic checks and then marks the disk as needing attention in Windows). NTFS is also slow (in Linux) compared to Linux-native filesystems, and it lacks important Linux/Unix filesystem features. For all these reasons, any filesystem that's to be used only from Linux should be Linux-native (ext2/3/4fs, XFS, JFS, ReiserFS, or btrfs, to name the most popular current ones).
  • If you'll be dual-booting with Windows, it's conventional to install Windows first, leaving free space for Ubuntu. This guarantees that Windows will get whatever primary partitions it needs, and that Windows won't be able to damage your partition layout, as it has a habit of doing when logical partitions are involved. Installing Windows first also means that GRUB (Ubuntu's boot loader) will be able to detect Windows and add it to its menu. If you install Windows second, the Windows boot loader will end up taking over from GRUB and boot straight to Windows, which means post-installation fixes that won't be required if you install Windows first.
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