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idkwiam187
n00b
Joined: 16 Jan 2004
Posts: 46
Location: Virginia, USA
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 Posted: Tue Jan 03, 2006 4:23 pm Post subject: /home and an external USB HD |
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Here is my situation: I have an internal 40 GB IDE drive with a ~20 GB WinXP partition, my ~19 GB Gentoo /, and the rest swap:
| Code: | Disk /dev/hda: 40.0 GB, 40020664320 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 4865 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hda1 * 1 2432 19535008+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/hda2 2433 4762 18715725 83 Linux
/dev/hda3 4763 4865 827347+ 5 Extended
/dev/hda5 4763 4865 827316 82 Linux swap / Solaris |
I also have a 120 GB external USB hard drive, with 60 GB unpartitioned (and the partitioned space is expendable):
| Code: | Disk /dev/sda: 123.5 GB, 123522416640 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 15017 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 1 7833 62918541 7 HPFS/NTFS |
Currently, I have approximately 8.4 GB free on my Linux partition, but I would like to start backing up my DVDs to movie files, stored in /home, which I know would eat that free space up fairly quickly.
I've read about making separate partitions for various mountpoints, ranging from /boot to /home to /usr, but I was just wondering whether or not there would be any big drawbacks/risks to having /home and possibly /usr (since /usr is the biggest space-consumer besides /home) on an external drive.
For regular everyday use (multimedia, browsing, chat, occasional gaming), what other partitions would you recommend to be or personally have set aside from / on separate partitions?
Also, what size, given my purposes, would you assign to /home and/or the other separate mountpoints you would make if you were I?
Thank you for your time, and I apologize if some of these questions have been asked before. |
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Pizon
n00b
Joined: 04 Jan 2006
Posts: 8
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| Posted: Wed Jan 04, 2006 9:17 am Post subject: |
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| Quote: |
I've read about making separate partitions for various mountpoints, ranging from /boot to /home to /usr, but I was just wondering whether or not there would be any big drawbacks/risks to having /home and possibly /usr (since /usr is the biggest space-consumer besides /home) on an external drive.
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I don't see any reason you couldn't put /usr and /home on an external USB drive. As long as your kernel has proper support for USB storage and you have /etc/fstab configured properly you should be fine. I would probably give consideration to putting /usr/portage/distfiles and maybe /usr/src on separate partitions on the external drive leaving the rest of /usr on your internal hard drive. That way if something happens to break you'll still have access to /usr/bin and /usr/sbin should the need arise. Having /home on an external drive might be handy for usage with multiple computers. Of course, toting around an external hard drive has possible security implications; what would happen to your addressbook, personal accounting software files, etc should you lose the drive or it is stolen?
| Quote: | | For regular everyday use (multimedia, browsing, chat, occasional gaming), what other partitions would you recommend to be or personally have set aside from / on separate partitions? |
I like to put /boot, /home, /tmp and /var on separate partitions and then tweak /etc/fstab for security.
| Quote: | | Also, what size, given my purposes, would you assign to /home and/or the other separate mountpoints you would make if you were I? |
I use the following:
~100MB /boot
~1GB /root
~1GB /tmp
~5GB /var
~15GB /usr
remainder of drive for /home |
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