What Is Partitioning?

Partitioning is the practice of dividing your drive into multiple segments, much like sections of a library. They belong to the same library, but different types of books are stored in each section. You have one section for fiction, one section for science, and another for history, as well as others for different subjects. Partitioning a hard disk creates different areas in which you can store data, much like a directory.

The main difference, and main advantage, is that you can access each partition as an individual hard disk on your computer. When you click “Computer” from the Start menu in Windows 7, you’ll see each partition with its own drive letter.

Why Partition?

Your hard drive is simply a collection of plates that store data by means of magnetic read/write heads that run around the disk. Look at the image below for an example:

The background of the image is a piece of the surface of the drive platter, on which all your data is stored. It’s difficult to imagine how, in that space, there are tens of thousands – if not millions – of bits of data stored. If you can imagine that, you can realize just how fragile the drive itself is, and how it can easily be corrupt. Are you willing to take such a risk?

If you’re willing to risk data loss because you believe your hard drive is durable, you probably don’t know how a hard drive works, or believe that the data you’re protecting isn’t worth the resources you would put into new storage.

First of all, hard drives aren’t as durable as you may believe. Read/write heads on hard drives are so close to their platters (less than the thickness of a hair on your head) that you’d be amazed at how it manages not to ever touch the surface. Actually, there’s an ultra-thin lubricant (much like teflon) on every platter, and read/write heads tend to skid off when they do that. Sometimes, though, the read/write head touches the drive platter at such an angle in which the lubricant really won’t have much of an effect and will scratch the drive.

Then there’s another problem. Did you know that ambient air cannot enter a hard drive? Even the smallest speck of dust will likely corrupt data on your drive and scratch the platter so one entire sector of it will turn bad and refuse to run. This kind of thing happens every day to unsuspecting users of any device that has a hard disk. You see, the hard disk does allow for a small amount of air to enter it, so it can equalize with the atmospheric pressure. The drive has a filter around it to ensure that no particles get trapped inside. After a while, this filter isn’t going to be as efficient as it used to be.

To get an idea of what kind of damage could happen to your disk, let’s have a look at this image:

Take note that the entire surface has to be homogeneous. That stripe on the surface is a scratch that was made in a split second, rendering a chunk of the drive unreadable. With a partition closer to the center of the drive, some of the data is still recoverable. Partitions like that sit at the “end” of the drive.

Windows functions like this: It treats each partition as its own volume of data.

Let’s say you have a disk with two partitions and the system partition is no longer accessible. If you install the hard drive on another computer with Windows, it will read the unaffected partition perfectly, allowing you to take some, if not all, of that data out. If you had all of your disk on one partition, you’ve pretty much arrived at a dead end.

Aren’t You Supposed to Plan a Partition Scheme Before Installing Windows 7?

You’re in luck! Windows Vista and 7 both have the ability to create partitions on the fly while still maintaining drive integrity. For this, you should always back up your drive into another one before you start. You never know if you’d end up losing data that’s valuable to you. Install a drive cloning utility and back up the drive if you want to. If you don’t have that kind of money, you won’t have to worry. Partitioning usually doesn’t result in data loss.

In Windows Vista and 7, you can shrink a partition to make room for another one. Go ahead and check it out in the disk management utility. Type “Disk Management” in your Start menu’s search box and you’ll find it. When you right-click a partition, click “Shrink Volume.”

Another Useful Tool In Case of a Drive Apocalypse

Ever heard of Symform? It’s a Cloud-based storage platform that safely puts your data into several redundant arrays spread across the world by people like you! You can get up to 200 GB of storage for free, as long as you contribute that much of your drive space to the service. The costs of getting a new 200 GB drive for this kind of thing is much less than the price you’d pay for traditional Cloud storage. They use a RAID-96 array to ensure that your files are securely stored within another contributor’s computer. Give it a shot!

You get 10 GB of storage, initially, without any contribution. As long as you contribute 20 GB or more, you’re set for a higher amount of data storage. This is more than enough to store all your important personal files. No one will have a peek at them, since only small encrypted fragments of each file are placed in one computer at any given time.

Got Any Suggestions?

Help us add to this by submitting your own ideas and experiences in the comments section below!

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In Windows Vista and 7, you can go the Disk Management Console to manage your partition, but if you are looking for a much easier (and quicker) way to extend, move, resize your Windows partition, Aomei Partition Assistant is one good tool that you can use. (And yes, there is a giveaway for this great software, read on for more details)

Aomei Partition Assistant (APA) is a partition manager for Windows 2000, XP, Vista and Windows 7. It can resize and move partition, extend system drive, repartition, merge, split partition and so on.

On the main screen, you can click the “Extend Partition Wizard” link on the left sidebar to start the wizard. It will show a new window asking if you want to extend the system partition (C:) or other hard drive partition.

You can then follow the step-by-step guide to complete the partition extending process.

The Disk/Partition copy is also one useful feature. It can create a complete clone of your existing disk/partition so you can restore to it in the event that your main hard disk crashes. You can choose to copy only the used space of the disk, or a full clone of the entire disk.

Features such as resizing, creating new partition, moving, formating are also handy. There is even a check partition function where it can check the integrity of your disk.

Wrapping up, disk partitioning is not something that you play with everyday, but when you need to do it, it is always handy to have such a tool around.

The Home edition of Partition Assistant is free to download and use, but is only supported on 32-bit platform. The professional edition cost US$29. It supports 64-bit platforms and can be used for business purpose.

Free giveaway

From 25 – 28 Jan 2011, Aomei will be giving away the Partition Assistant Professional Edition for FREE. All you need to do is to visit this giveaway site, enter your email address and the download link will be emailed to you. Valid till 28th Jan 2011.

Aomei Partition Assistant

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Typical Entries

If you open up your /etc/fstab file, you’ll see a list of the drives/partitions and some of their options

#<fs>       <mount point>   <type>  <options>          <dump>  <pass>
proc           /proc         proc   nodev,noexec,nosuid  0       0
UUID=309...    /             ext4   errors=remount-ro    0       1
/dev/sdb5      none          swap   sw                   0       0
 
# Some text shortened for line readability

The proc entry is one you’ll find on any Linux system. Wikipedia has a good writeup on the details of proc, but essentially it’s a fake filesystem full of files that contain useful system information. If you haven’t already done so, digging through /proc can be a very rewarding activity.

The next line is an example of fstab mounting your root partition. This example is on Ubuntu, which prefers to use unique identifiers to find devices instead of the normal filesystem location (such as /dev/sda1).

The final thing you’ll find in just about any fstab file is an entry for the swap partition. Swap space holds needed information that can’t currently fit into RAM, so it’s an important thing to have on a desktop installation.

The Columns

This is what it’s all about – the cryptic string of options following the start of the line. A few are pretty straightforward, but others (like dump and pass) don’t exactly spell it out for you.

Filesystem – Typically the location of the filesystem you wish to mount. Traditionally this has been the Linux device name of the partition, like /dev/sda1. Some newer distributions like to use the UUID instead, a unique identifier assigned to the filesystem.

Mount Point – In most cases, this is entirely up to you. It’s the directory you wish to use in your daily operations when you need to access the data. Most distributions include a place for things like this, often /mnt or /media. Another option is to mount to some place in your home directory. For example, if the partition holds all your music, you might want to mount it directly to /home/MusicDrive or something of the sort.

Type – Of course we’ll want to enter the type of filesystem. Chances are you’ll mostly be working with the common Linux (ext3, ext4, etc) and Windows (vfat and ntfs) types. If you’re not sure, or if the type may change from time to time, you can use the type auto and it will detect the filesystem type automatically.

Options – There are quite a few options that could be used in this column, so for a full list with descriptions see this link. Some of the more common ones include:

• ro – mount read only
• rw – read and write
• auto / noauto – whether or not it’s mounted on boot
• defaults – use the default settings for that filesystem type
• sync / async – force immediate writing of data to drive

Dump – This is a true/false flag for the dump backup utility. It indicates whether or not the filesystem should be backed up (with 1 for true, 0 for false).

Pass – When fsck needs to scan for corruption, it follows the numbers listed here to determine the order in which to scan. Your root partition will typically be 1, and all other filesystems rise in number from there. A pass number of 0 means the filesystem will not be checked.

Hope this is useful for all of you.

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Download NTFS mounter.

Open the dmg file and drag the NTFS mounter icon to the Applications folder.

Go to your Applications and open the NTFS mounter app.

You should now see a black cat icon at the menu bar.

Click on the black cat icon and (if nothing goes wrong) you should see your NTFS drive listed. Click the respective entry to mount your NTFS drive. That’s it.

Note: If you are using other ways to get mount your NTFS, you will have to eject the volume first before it can be mounted by NTFS mounter. Once you have ejected the volume, you can try to select it again from the menu.

Give NTFS mounter a try and tell us if it is better than MacFuse/NTFS-3G.

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I should note that we won’t be covering the “how” of partitioning, but the “why”. There are multiple reasons for this. For one, the specifics of how will vary widely from system to system and there is no way I can know what would work best for your particular setup. Also, in all honesty, I don’t want to be responsible if the partitioning goes wrong and you lose that video file with the alternate ending to Quantum Leap.

If you would like a detailed guide on the “how” aspect, take a look at Damien’s article How To Resize And Create Partitions With Gnome Partition Editor.

Note: For the sake of simplicity, all the charts in this guide will be based on a 100GB drive, and will not show the swap partition. If you follow any of the schemes shown here, you’ll probably want to add a small swap partition in there somewhere. I usually stick mine at the end of the drive.

Windows Dual Boot

With the right partition setup, dual booting with Windows is a breeze. With a poor setup, it can be an infuriating pain. The most important thing to note when planning a dual-boot setup is that many versions of Windows expect to be the one and only OS on the system. Often, Windows doesn’t like being on anything other than the first partition of the first drive, and will not hesitate to wipe out anything in its way. You’ll save yourself a LOT of trouble by knowing this ahead of time and allowing Windows to occupy that slot before installing Linux.

In this example, we’ve created a 50GB Windows partition as the first partition on the drive. Install Windows first, and once it’s all finished, go ahead and install your Linux of choice on the remaining space. Just about any modern Linux will see the Windows installation and automatically add it to your boot menu.

/home

One of the most common setups for Linux is to separate /home partition. There are several advantages for this. The first is that it lets you limit the amount of space that can be taken up by user files (this will be a common theme among the setups discussed here). More importantly, keeping these files separate means whatever may happen to your system files (in “/”) your home will be left alone. This means that you could reinstall your entire OS, but leave your application and desktop settings exactly the way they were.

For example, let’s say you’re running Ubuntu 9.04 with /home as its own partition. You’ve got lots of files saved in your home along with all your desktop settings, Firefox bookmarks, conky config, etc. If you decide to reinstall or upgrade, you can wipe the whole system while leaving your home intact. Once the reinstall/upgrade is done, you’ll have all your files and settings just the way you left them.

You can, of course, adjust the sizes of the partitions to meet your needs. If you don’t plan to install many programs in the root partition, you can drop that down to 10 or 20 GB and leave the rest for user files, or vice versa.

/boot

Many people set up a small boot partition separate from the root. In my experience, this comes in handy if you’re running multiple distros on the same machine. Since the /boot partition is where Linux stores the kernel and GRUB menu, this lets you share boot information across both distros. If you like to build custom kernels (more fun and easy than it sounds) you can place your custom kernel in the boot partition, and let both distros run off a single custom kernel.

The /boot partition does not need to be large. Unless you plan on loading up tons of kernels, 100MB should probably do the trick just fine.

/usr

Another common technique is to give /usr a partition of its own. A lot of things live in /usr, like most of the binaries you’ve added after the initial install. If you want to put a limit on the amount of space that can be taken up by user-installed programs, this is one way to do it.

Since so many things live in /usr, you’d want to give it a fair amount of space.

/var

A common practice on servers is to put /var into its own partition. This is usually done to keep a lid on the amount of space that can be taken up by things like log files.

Exactly what size to make the /var partition can vary widely depending on how you use your system. Most desktop Linux users probably shouldn’t need to worry about a /var partition.

What NOT to Partition

There are some parts of the filesystem you want to keep in root. Items in /bin, /lib, and /etc are often needed immediately at boot time, and if they’re on separate partitions, they may not be mounted before they’re needed. For example, /lib usually contains some kernel modules that will likely be needed immediately upon booting the kernel. If the partition is not yet loaded, things could get nasty.

Some say that /usr could fall in this same category. I’ve personally never had a problem with a /usr partition, but that may be something to keep in mind before you start chopping up your drive.

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For those users who use a desktop operating system and expect a graphical experience, opening a terminal window is not a normal thing to do. That does not mean they are incapable of learning it. They are just more comfortable with a visual interface.

There are many control panel tools and settings dialogs in KDE that make it easier for graphical-minded users to get things done. Here are five stand-alone applications that will help you stay informed about your computer’s status and health.

1. KInfoCenter

It is just what it says. It provides users with information about their systems. There are categories for graphics cards, PCI devices, memory, CPU, and many others. If you are ever unsure about what devices you have or what system settings you currently have, KInfoCenter is a good place to start.

2. KDiskFree

This is a very useful tool for those of us who manage to fill up our hard drives rather quickly. You can monitor disk usage on both fixed drives and currently connected removable ones.

3.  KDE Partition Manager

Need to format a drive, resize a partition, or create a swap partition? KDE Partition Manager can do it all. It depends on the trusted disk “Parted” libraries, so users can know they are getting reliable results

4. KSystemLog

Linux documents every major occurrence on your system. You just have to know where to look for that documentation. For convenience, KSystemLog will collect that information for you and display it in a window, all with the click of a button.  KSystemLog monitors your log files, updating them periodically. It currently supports system log, kernel log, authentication log, daemons’ logs, CUPS (printer) log, X.org log, and others.

5. Ksysguard

KDE 4 includes a handy little task manager that you can access by pressing Control+Escape or by clicking the button on Krunner. For those of us who used KDE 3, however, we need something a little more robust. Ksysguard monitors processes, provides stats, and includes graphs, updated in real time. Processes and programs can be monitored, filtered, and killed, when necessary. As with previous versions, users can add new tabs, placing customized sensors on each tab. Sensors include CPU cores, uptime, partition usage, log files, memory, and much more.

There are many others tools that can make your Linux experience easier. If you have a favorite, feel free to post it in the comments. For me, after having worked as a Linux system admin for many years, I still occasionally love to open up Konsole and hack away the command line.

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Disclaimer: Anything that deals with the filesystem hack always involve certain risks. While we have tested it out and get it working on our systems, there is no guarantee that it will work for you. We shall not be responsible for any data loss or hard disk crash. Before you try this, please remember to BACKUP your system and important files.

Step 1: Upgrade your existing Ubuntu

First for all, upgrade your existing Ubuntu to Ubuntu 9.04. You can skip this step if you have already upgraded to Ubuntu 9.04.

Press Alt + F2 on your keyboard and type in

update-manager -d

The Update Manager will appear. Click on the Upgrade button.

Depending on your Internet connection, the upgrade could last for several hours.

At the same time, proceed to Ubuntu website and download the Ubuntu 9.04 LiveCD iso.

After you have downloaded the LiveCD, burn it into a CD or use the USB Startup Disk Creator (System -> Administration -> USB Startup Disk Creator) to create a bootable USB drive.

Once the system completes the upgrading, restart your computer and play around with it to make sure that it is working fine in your system.

When you are happy with the result, reboot the computer again, this time boot into your LiveCD.

Step 2: Upgrading to Ext4

Go to System->Partition Editor. This will show all the partition in your hard disk. Record down the filesystem ID of the partition that you want to convert to ext4.

Close the Partition Editor. Open a terminal, type the following:

sudo tune2fs -O extents,uninit_bg,dir_index /dev/XXXX

Replace XXXX by the filesystem ID that you have recorded just now.

Once that is done, type the following to fixed your partition:

sudo fsck -pf /dev/XXXX

Don’t forget to replace XXXX with your filesystem ID.

Mount your filesystem

sudo mount -t ext4 /dev/XXXX /mnt

Open the fstab file:

gksu gedit /mnt/etc/fstab

and change the ext3 entry to ext4. Save and exit.

Back to the terminal, we need to reinstall the grub bootloader.

sudo grub-install /dev/XXX

This time, replace the XXX by the filesystem without the number. For example, sudo grub-install /dev/sda

Close the terminal and restart the computer. Reboot into ubuntu 9.04.

In the terminal, type

df -T

You should see your filesystem mounted as ext4 now

That’s all. Enjoy!

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A good way to workaround this is to make your Ubuntu automount your NTFS partition upon booting up. While this can be easily fixed by changing the fstab file, it involves hitting the terminal and edit the root file, which maybe a big turn off for newbies and it could possibly crash your system if it is not handled properly.

To fix this issue the simpler way, we can install the application PySDM and access the storage device manager with a simple to use and user-friendly interface.

PySDM is a Storage Device Manager that allows full customization of hard disk mountpoints without manually access to fstab. It also allows the creation of udev rules for dynamic configuration of storage devices

Installation

The package pysdm is found in the Ubuntu repository. You can easily install it via the Synaptic Package Manager (System -> Administration -> Synaptic package Manager). Alternatively, for those who prefer the apt-get way, here’s the command:

sudo apt-get install pysdm

Better still, click this link to install pysdm in your Ubuntu system.

Usage

Once installed, go to System -> Administration -> Storage Device Manager.

You will find your all your partitions listed on the left pane of the window.

The partitions are labelled in the sda1, sda2, sda3, etc format. To identify which entry is your NTFS partition, highlight each entry and check the Type field on the right pane. This will tell you the filesystem of that partition.

Once you have located your NTFS partition, click on the Assistant button.

Check the box The File system is mounted at boot time.

Uncheck the box Mount file system in read only mode.

Click OK to close the Assistant window, follow by Apply to save the changes. Restart your computer, your NTFS partition should automount by itself upon booting up.

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