[SOLVED] Best set up for a new installation?

Hi Guys,

My 1TB Windows hard drive crashed so I had to get a new one, thankfully this means I have now installed Zorin as my No.1 OS.

My question is this, what is the best way to set up the new drive? I want to keep all my data in one place so it's easy to keep tidy and to back up. But I also want it so if I upgrade to Zorin 7 I can just install it in place of the old Z6 and 'point' to the data. Is it possible to have the 'Home' folders on a separate partition. Is it also possible to have a 'Shared' folder that all users can access?

Hi,

please take a look here:

viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2601

this will give you some idea for different scenarios.

Basically you can do what you want with a 1TB drive, if you are only going to use the one OS then you can do something like:

1 x swap of not more than 4GB, 1 x root of about 20Gb and 1 x home which can be any size really, you can create a 4th partition and format it to FAT32 or NTFS which all users can access, there are several ways really but that is what I would do as it is very simple.

Regards Wolfman

Thanks again Wolfman!!!

OK, will do. I am using Virtual Box to run XP, that seems to work OK. I just need it to run MS Access for a couple of databases and another small app that won't run properly under Wine (it crashes all the time). Oh and Swarm Assault, an old game I like to play (it crashes under Wine as well)

Thanks for all the help

Oh yeah, I forgot about that, whatta noob lol.

...and I cloned my 250GB drive on to the 1TB drive with Clonezilla which left 700GB unallocated. I used Gparted to format the 700GB and accepted the defaults which was as a Primary partition formatted to ext2, is this ok?

Oh and currently root owns the 700GB how do I take it back?

Hi,

you only need about 20GB for root so I will leave you to work that one out!!.

Read this thread through again, I did explain about drive sizes:

viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2601

If you haven't already put too much on the drive; I would start from scratch!!. It would be far easier than trying to resize and move partitions otherwise you would most likely have gapping holes in the drive.

You should be using the "Ext4" format for both root and home!!.

Regards Wolfman

I think I'm sorted now, cheers

Ok, so maybe not

I've gone to far to start from scratch so I'll just resize my partitions (he says confidently) and accept some holes

I am only going to have Zorin installed, I'm not dual booting.

How do I set the /home mount point on the 700Gb partition? and what will happen to my current /home and data?

Plus I can't set permissions because 'root' owns the partition, how can I (or should I) 'own' it?

Hi,

please post a screenshot of your current partitions using Gparted before we go any further.

Regards Wolfman

Here 'tis:

Hi,

your root partition is too big, 25 - -30 GB would normally be enough, you should have all 3 Linux partitions side by side but you have 1 in (the swap) an extended partition which isn't necessary!!.

Take a look at this guide again please:

viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2601

I assume you are only using root because your 700GB partition isn't mounted!!. (Are you copying and pasting to that partition??)

Regards Wolfman

Yeah, I am going to resize the root to 30GB and add the remaining to the 700GB (or just create another 200GB partition?). I see in the guide at the start that everything apart from the root is inside an extended partition but later on they are not. So can I delete the swap and extended partition then just recreate the swap?

It is the way it is because I just accepted the defaults when I installed Zorin on my 250GB drive and I’m a noob (and maybe a nob ). Then when I bought my 1TB I just Cloned the 250GB to the 1TB, hence the extra 700GB. I think I understand mount points but could not find where to set the 700 to /home. I was also worried about what would happen if I set the 700 to /home and also had /home on the root. I have read the guide and think I understand it, I just want to do things safely. If I could do it all again I would do it properly first time round.

When I use the 700 (to copy/cut and paste on to) I have to mount it each time which I assume is because it doesn’t have a mount point?

hi,

yes, you don't have a mount point for home and that is why you must mount it all the time, I would wipe everything and create the partitions and when installing, select something else. (see guide again!).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qBCHsgry2RQ

Regards Wolfman

Oh dear, OK, if I do this do I just have to make sure I have backed up my current /home folder then after I reinstall copy that content back to the new /home partition?

Hi,

best to backup the files to an external drive whilst you prepare the partitions because you may lose everything on the drive depending on what and how you do things!!.

Regards Wolfman

OK, I'll let you know how it all turns out

Right, we are back in the game!

Here is the new partition picture:



and yes there is 2mb free at the end but I am not worried about that.

So not wanting to start from scratch here is what I did:

I booted using the live CD

Started Gparted and went to work

I deleted the swap and extended partition

Moved the root partition to the right (leaving 2GB at the start of the drive) and shrunk it to 40GB

Recreated the swap at the start of the drive

Resized the 700GB partition to include the freed up space from the root partition.

This took 12 hours to complete!!!

I found this article:

http://www.howtogeek.com/116742/how-to- ... ng-ubuntu/

This showed me how to edit the fstab file to create the mount point for the large /home drive.

All done!!!

OK, confession time... I did read on and moved the old /home before I edited the fstab file so I lost sudo access... so I had to use the live CD, mount the disk and edited the fstab from there, rebooted and voila!

At least I learnt heaps

Thanks for you help again guys.

Hi,

glad to hear it, if you practice a bit more; you will cut the time down to a few minutes!!

Regards Wolfman