How to wisely partition a 2TB HDD?

Question

Well I have some doubts about how to assign partitions on my HDDs and SSD. I'll explain my setup and how do I plan to use it and you can give me advices.

I have a 120GB SSD where I have Windows 7 and some other software. Currently it has 20GB or so of free space. I also have a Seagate 2TB HDD which I use only for storage and backups. And I also have a WD 2TB HDD which is nearly empty because I purhcased it not long ago. 16GB of RAM

My plan is: Destinate 500GB out of 2TB on the WD HDD to Ubuntu itself, that means "/", "/home" and "/swapp" but I don't know how to distribute those 500GB in the different partitions, and I don't know if 500GB is way too much.

Thanx in advance.

Answer 1

For /, 20GB usually are enough. I've yet to exceed that size even on old installations.

A rule of thumb for the size of a swap partition is 1x to 2x the size of your RAM, depending on whether you plan to use suspend (less if you don't, more if you do).

That would leave about 450GB for your /home partition, which can be plenty if you only want to play around with Ubuntu or not nearly enough if you are planning on storing lots of media files on there. Also, if you are planning on using Steam for Linux – just a wild guess — keep in mind that games installed via Steam are stored in your home directory.