I was partitioning my hard disk but there is something wrong?

Question

I was partitioning my hard disk based on what I understood from this question.

This is the final result:

But I faced some problems here, I don't know which partitions should be primary and which should be logical, so I made /, /boot, /tmp and /home primary partitions and /swap a logical drive, is this right or wrong? I don't know because I'm new to Linux. Second problem, I want /dev/sda7 and /dev/sda8 to be NTFS and play role as D and E drives in Windows to put all my files on them (movies, games, music, etc.). But I don't know what I should choose in mount point for them.

This is the final result after partitioning the hard disk and the computer seems to be slow:

Please help me making the ideal or perfect partitioning to my hard disk.

Answer 1

NTFS Partitions to share file with Windows

A couple of notes on what you seem to be doing:

1. You are formatting sda7 and sda8 as Ext4 not NTFS. Windows will not be able to access this partition format. Why not leave this space Unallocated, unasigned to any partition and later create the NTFS partitions as you need them using a partition tool like GParted(can be installed from repositories).

2. If you really want to create this Ext4 partitions you don't need to set a mount point for them. This will only mean they will not be automatically mounted when you boot up. They will be visible in the Files(Nautilus / Ubuntu's File Manager) as another hard drive you can access just with a click.

3. You should be able to format these drives as NTFS from the get go. I am not certain how the menu on the installer works but you should format them as NTFS and not Ext4.

I would need to access an installation media to help you with more details. If you need more help with the steps let me know on a comment.

Partitioning in Ubuntu

In Ubuntu partitions are not assigned letters. Any partition that you create will be place inside the directory tree like another folder.

• / is called the root. This is the lowest level in the directory tree.
• /home/ is a folder directly under root that is generally used to store user specific data. You will have many subfolders: /home/username1, /home/username2/, /home/username3... These folders are created only for user that are real people; some users are used to run services(transmission-daemon) or are system specific(root). For these other user there won't be a home folder.
• When you mount a disk in Ubuntu from the file explorer(nautilus) it will create a new folder under /media/. The folder name is not important, it will be generated automatically. When you unmount the disk the folder will be empty and if automatically generated also deleted (will not appear anymore).
• I would suggest you turn sda7 & sda8 into NTFS formatted partitions and mount them at /media/somefoldernameyoulike. So that you can easily access them on every boot. These however is not requiered.

Your Case

I would suggest you do not create the /boot/ & /tmp/ partitions as you don't seem too familiar with the system. Create the /home/ partitions and make it bigger!. Your everyday files will generally be stored under /home/ partition.

Your swap partition should be as big as your ram memory in order to be able to activate hibernate at some point.

Good day.

Answer 2

Torrien's answer covers a lot of important points. Here are a few more I'd like to add:

• Linux doesn't really care about primary vs. logical partitions; you can set up a system with nothing but primaries, nothing but logicals, or any mix of the two you like (within the constraint that you can have no more than four primary partitions or three primaries plus an arbitrary number of logicals on a single MBR disk).
• Modern computers (those introduced in mid-2011 or later) usually provide EFI firmware rather than the older BIOS firmware. Most EFI-based computers can boot using the older BIOS-mode boot loaders, but this is problematic for many reasons, as described on this page of mine. This is especially true when dual-booting. When booting in EFI mode, you're likely to use the GUID Partition Table (GPT), which supports up to 128 partitions, with no conception of extended or logical partitions. Thus, if you boot in EFI mode, the question of primary vs. logical partitions becomes meaningless. You may want to look into this issue before you head further down what may become a dead-end path.
• Windows does care about primary vs. logical status on MBR disks. Specifically, the Windows boot partition (normally C:) must be primary. Sometimes Windows needs at least two primary partitions (the second is for a recovery partition). Of course, when booting in EFI mode from a GPT disk, this distinction becomes meaningless under Windows, as well as under Linux.
• Your question implies that you'll be dual-booting with Windows; but your earlier question states that you will not be dual-booting with Windows. This detail is critical, because....
• If Ubuntu will be the only OS on the disk, you should NOT use NTFS on the disk. There is no Linux utility for repairing NTFS partitions (the poorly-named ntfsfix utility only does very basic checks and then marks the disk as needing attention in Windows). NTFS is also slow (in Linux) compared to Linux-native filesystems, and it lacks important Linux/Unix filesystem features. For all these reasons, any filesystem that's to be used only from Linux should be Linux-native (ext2/3/4fs, XFS, JFS, ReiserFS, or btrfs, to name the most popular current ones).
• If you'll be dual-booting with Windows, it's conventional to install Windows first, leaving free space for Ubuntu. This guarantees that Windows will get whatever primary partitions it needs, and that Windows won't be able to damage your partition layout, as it has a habit of doing when logical partitions are involved. Installing Windows first also means that GRUB (Ubuntu's boot loader) will be able to detect Windows and add it to its menu. If you install Windows second, the Windows boot loader will end up taking over from GRUB and boot straight to Windows, which means post-installation fixes that won't be required if you install Windows first.