There are two cases of partitioning - if you will be installing Ubuntu for first time, or if you have already installed Ubuntu.
Fresh install of Ubuntu
At some point during the installation process you will come to this window, where you will be prompted to choose installation type:
Normally if you are a new user you should select Erase everything and install Ubuntu. This will create the needed partitions automatically.
But since you want more advanced partitioning you want to choose the last option - Something else.
After you choose it and click next you will see the partitioning window. If you previously had some OS on the hard disk you will see several partitions present. You click on each of them and click -
sign to delete them, until you have only free space left like in the image note that deleting partitions will erase all information on your HDD!
Now you are ready to create partitions.
First depending on your BIOS settings and the boot mode you selected (Legacy boot or UEFI) if you chose UEFI you will have to create an EFI system partition.
Click on the free space row and then click on the +
button on the bottom left side and choose following parameters:
Size: 100 [MB]
Type of the new partition: Primary
Location of the new partition: Beginning of the space
Use as: EFI boot partition
Then click ok. The new partition should show up.
After that you will need to create a SWAP partition. Usually I create mine with the same size of how much RAM my PC has. It is often recommended to have at least half of the size of your RAM so if your PC has 8 GB RAM, your minimum swap size would be 4 GB, but you can make it larger.
So again click on the free space then click +
and select:
Size: 6000 [MB]
Type of the new partition: Primary
Location of the new partition: Begining of the space
Use as: SWAP
Now you need to create the partition for the root filesystem. Click on the free space then click +
and select:
For size you can choose between 20 000 MB (20 GB) and 80 000 MB (80 GB) since you have 1000 GB HDD. This way you will have all other space left for your home folder and files.
Yes this is the last partition you have to make - the one that will mount the /home
directory where all users and user data will be stored. Later on if you need to reinstall your OS you will only format the root partition and you can be sure your home partition will stay same as it is without touching it. Also all of your program's settings and data will be there, because most programs store their cache in users' home folders.
So one last time click free space click +
and select
Size: [Use the default proposed it will all space left]
Type of the new partition: Primary
Location of the new partition: Begining of the space
Use as: Ext4
Mount point: /home
That's it! Click next and then the install process will continue.
Note that in Linux you do not have to create multiple partitions (like in windows D: for work E: for games), though you can. In windows is a good idea to split large partitions in smaller ones, but with Linux this is not the case. You can create separate folders in your home directory to organize things up. All of them will be safe from reinstall under the /home
partition.
Already installed Ubuntu
If you have already installed Ubuntu and you used default installer suggestion, you probably have your /home
and root /
folders under one partition. In order to move the home folder to new partition, you will have to shrink some free space from the /
partition and then move home.
This is a very risky operation and may cause loss of files if something goes wrong. You should first make a backup if you have important data.
The process of moving the home folder to a new partition is well described here . After you follow up this tutorial you should have a separate partition for your home folder.