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I want to have dual OS of Win8 & Ubuntu 12.10. Provided that Ubuntu can access ntfs partition of Windows but same can't be said about Windows this leads to a question mark on the significance of having /home partition while installing Ubuntu. As far as I know /swap & / are the two partitions directly used by Ubuntu to store programs, installation & stuff while the documents/media resides in /home. Now because Ubuntu releases are more frequent than Windows & updates needs backup & relate stuff, so I came to decision to not to use /home at all, rather keep all my documents/media in ntfs, which would be untouched while upgrading Ubuntu as Win updates are once in a decade!

Is my thinking correct? If yes, what would be the minimum space I should allot to /home plus how much I should allot to / one must know that I plan to use heavy applications like Maple, Matlab & Sagemath on Ubuntu.

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    This will help you understand Linux Filesystem hierarchy askubuntu.com/questions/933/…
    – Uri Herrera
    Nov 27, 2012 at 6:02
  • "while the documents/media resides in /home" These are -settings- and it is perfectly possible to change the location. I myself have a 5 Gb space for /home (and except for the hidden and system files in /home every other directory/document is on another disc).
    – Rinzwind
    Nov 27, 2012 at 8:04

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As much as I understand the potential benefit from having a shared NTFS partition accessible from both Ubuntu, and Windows we need to keep the following in mind:

  • Data on NTFS do not have proper permissions when accessed from Ubuntu (think of executable, read-only, hidden...).
  • No Trash on NTFS. Accidentally deleted files can not be recovered without recovery tools.
  • There is no filesystem repair tool from Ubuntu. In case of filesystem inconsistencies booting Windows is a prerequisite.
  • NTFS data access is a bit slower from Ubuntu.

Therefore an NTFS formatted data-only partition only makes sense when we have Windows in a dual-boot setup.

Having Ubuntu HOME on an NTFS formatted partition is not possible.

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According To me swap should be double of your RAM, if you need Home separately , it should be as per your requirement like I have 500 GB HDD , I allocated 100 GB, other space you can give to /root (min 5 GB).

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  • Thnx for replying but may I ask what comprehensive partition layout you use, I mean space allocation for /root /swap / & /home
    – nightcrawler
    Nov 27, 2012 at 7:20
  • @nightcrawler that's an entiry different question on its own(but has been asked before ;) ) Myself: 10, 5 and 5 Gb. Where I symlink /home/$USER/{dirs/ to /2nd_disc/{dirs}
    – Rinzwind
    Nov 27, 2012 at 8:06

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