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Christopher Dawson
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A quick partition primer

By | July 1, 2007, 11:12pm PDT

I just finished installing OpenSUSE 10.2 on my laptop. While the process went without a hitch (image gallery of the install with instructions and potential stumbling blocks to follow later today) and SUSE even recognized my wireless cards immediately, I realized that a basic understanding of disk partitions would be helpful, whether you live in L’Unix-land or Windows World. So here goes (experienced partitioners need not read any further unless you’d like some training materials for other users).

Hard drives (the main storage area on your computer, generally composed of spinning magnetic platters) can be divided into sections for use by your operating system. To the user, these are seen as completely separate disk drives (in Windows at least; in L’Unix they appear as separate media). They can be used as different drives (e.g., one for media files and another for program files) and, depending upon your setup, you may be able to look at one or more of them from any given operating system.

Which leads us to the two most important uses of partitions. The first relates to security and the stability of the programs you run on your machine. Most Linux installations will offer to partition your drive for you and place user folders (generally “Home”) on one partition and application data in another partition. This is generally considered best practice and you should let it happen. Windows neither tries to, nor can do this, so it’s less of an issue.

The second really spiffy use of partitions is the installation of multiple operating systems. This is also known as dual-booting or multi-booting. The various incarnations of Ubuntu are particularly good at recognizing other operating systems (like Windows) and offering to repartition your drive to preserve the existing OS. Then, when you boot your computer, you are given the choice of OS (e.g., Ubuntu and Windows). While this requires that you have enough space on your hard drive to hold two separate systems, it gives you a great deal of flexibility and allows you to live with an operating system in a way that live CDs can’t.

As always, there are two particular caveats. Partitions should not be used for backup purposes. For example, some users back up their My Documents folder onto another partition. This is useless since partitions actually reside on the same physical piece of hardware, even though they look like different drives to your operating system. Therefore, if one partition “crashes”, then they all go. Rather, you should back up to CD, DVD, or an extra hard drive.

Secondly, unless you are using utilities like those included with Ubuntu, partitioning tends to be destructive to data. Windows Vista installations are especially vulnerable to corruption from resizing the partitions on which they reside. Thus, before messing with your partitions, ensure that any important data are backed up (not to another partition) and you have time to deal with some potential messes. In general, the process is fairly straight-forward if you are using the right tools. However, a few good backups mean that in the worst-case scenario you can “format” (erase and start over) your hard drives (or just individual partitions) and install the operating system of your choice. Without backups, partitioning hard drives can be a lot less fun.

Otherwise, happy happy partitioning! I’m off to finish restoring all of my backups to my freshly repartitioned laptop.

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Operating System, Backup, Microsoft Windows, Partition, Christopher Dawson

Chris Dawson is a freelance writer and consultant with years of experience in educational technology and web-based systems. In 2011, he became the Vice President of Marketing for WizIQ, Inc., a virtual classroom and learning network SaaS provider.

Disclosure

Christopher Dawson

Christopher Dawson is the Vice President of Marketing for WizIQ, Inc., by day and a freelance writer and educational technology consultant by night. Well, most of his colleagues at WizIQ are based in India, so really he's working with them whenever he can stay awake. He has worked for his local school district as a teacher and technology director, for the Johns Hopkins University School of Public Health, and for Biogen, Inc. (now Biogen-IDEC, Inc.). He has also consulted with STATNet and Cytyc Corporation and retains close ties with X2 Development Corporation (now owned by Follett Software, the supplier of the student information system he administered for several years). Follett is paying him a monthly honorarium to act as a presenter for their "SIS Voices for Student Achievement" community (he produces occasional blog posts and hosts a monthly webinar on the use of student information systems to inform data-driven instruction and school-wide change. He regularly purchases and/or recommends Dell hardware. This is because Dell makes good hardware and has truly committed itself to education in innovative ways, particularly with their "Connected Classroom" initiative. It isn't because he has dealings with the company through his role at WizIQ (which he does) or because they have provided him with long-term loans of a variety of equipment for in-depth testing (which they have). Intel (reference designer for the Classmate PCs he has implemented in his local schools) has provided him with long-term loans of Classmate PCs for testing, as have Dell and Lenovo with their educational offerings. He may report on any of these companies as his experiences with them have direct bearing on educational technology; positive reports are not necessarily an endorsement and he receives no direct financial compensation from these companies or any others. Intel paid all expenses for his attendance at the 2009 Intel Classmate PC Ecosystem Summit which he attended as the sole representative of the technology press. He was invited to attend in 2010 but his wife would have killed him if he spent 3 days in Vegas geeking out and left her home alone with a new baby. Acer provided him with a 50% discount on an Aspire One netbook in early 2009 after he tested it for 30 days through their educational seed program. He liked the netbook at the time but it has since broken and sits unused in his office. Canonical sent him Ubuntu lanyards, t-shirts, and mousepads for his kids. He stole one of the lanyards and proudly hangs his keys from it and occasionally features his 8-year old wearing an oversized Ubuntu t-shirt on his Facebook profile. Gunnar Optiks sent him a pair of computer glasses to evaluate for a holiday gift guide. He is wearing them now as he types this because they never asked for them back and they rock out loud. Seriously - they work brilliantly and make it much easier to spend 20 hours a day staring at an LCD. If they ever asked for them back, he would fork over the $99 and buy a pair. Microsoft gave him 2 free copies of Office 2010 professional, a desktop clock, and a useless book on Office 2010 when he attended the launch of Office/Sharepoint 2010. He occasionally uses the SharePoint lanyard they gave him instead of the Ubuntu lanyard for his keys, but feels dirty afterwards. Adobe provided him with a pre-release version of the CS5 Master Collection for evaluation and ultimately provided a full, licensed copy for ongoing testing of educational applications of this admittedly expensive software. Like the Gunnars, if the license expires or they come out with CS6, he'd actually go out and buy it himself. Which is saying something, because he's actually pretty cheap. Any other companies wishing to send him cool things to evaluate, wear, or otherwise adorn his kids are more than welcome to; he promises to disclose it here if he keeps any of the stuff. Finally, because WizIQ is a virtual classroom and learning network provider, Chris, as VP of Marketing, frequently interacts with, seeks out deals with, and directly or indirectly competes with a whole lot of LMS, SIS, and other Education 2.0 companies. In general, he'll limit his reporting about these companies to news that does not impact his relationship with them or with WizIQ. If he reports on them, it's because what they are doing is newsworthy or worth the attention of his readers and not because he's trying to broker some deal, damage competition, or otherwise advance his position in his day job. LMS and SIS companies, along with other online learning communities, are a pretty important part of Ed Tech. If he stops reporting on them completely, there won't be a whole lot left. He'll be sure to call out any overt conflicts of interest if they are unavoidable. Finally, Follett Software Company pays him a little tiny honorarium every month to present on their SIS Voices webinars and to write the occasional blog or discussion thread for them. Since Follett recently bought X2 (maker of an awesome web-based SIS that Chris just happened to have used, served in advisory groups for, and frequently reported on), this is probably also worth disclosing.

Biography

Christopher Dawson

Christopher Dawson grew up in Seattle, back in the days of pre-antitrust Microsoft, coffeeshops owned by something other than Starbucks, and really loud, inarticulate music. He escaped to the right coast in the early 90's and received a degree in Information Systems from Johns Hopkins University. While there, he began a career in health and educational information systems, with a focus on clinical trials and related statistical programming and database modeling. This focus led him to several positions at Johns Hopkins, a couple-year stint in private industry, teaching high school math and technology, and 2 years as the technology director for his local school district. Most recently, he started his own consulting business and is now the Vice President of Marketing for WizIQ, Inc., a virtual classroom and learning network provider. He lives with his wife, five kids (yes, 5), 2 dogs, and a hateful cat in a small town in north-central Massachusetts. Although he is no longer teaching, his roles with WizIQ and ZDNet allow him to continue helping students and teachers add value to education with technology rather than merely adding to the bottom line.

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so things didnt go so well?
zigip 2nd Jul 2007
You wrote at the end:
"I?m off to finish restoring all of my backups to my freshly repartitioned laptop."
Why? did you not use the right tools for the partitioning, or did the repartitioning bomb?
View in thread
0 Votes
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Watch out for the UUID's
pjotr123 2nd Jul 2007
Modern Linuxes unfortunately tend to favour the use of UUID's to identify partitions in /etc/fstab and in /boot/grub/menu.lst

No problem as long as you have only one Linux on your hard drive (or one Linux and Windows), but a pain in the behind when you install more than one Linux. Each new Linux creates new UUID's and assigns those to the partitions, wiping the older UUID's. And thus creating problems for the older Linuxes, who can't find their partitions any more.

The only solution then, is to erase the UUID's from fstab and men.lst on all root partitions: Linux can also use the old way. Be careful here!

A typical fstab line with UUID is:
# /dev/sda1
UUID=7a212543-83c0-43db-a7f3-f631de4a79a3 / ext3 defaults,errors=remount-ro, 0 1

A cleaned up line in fstab is:
/dev/sda1 / ext3 defaults,errors=remount-ro 0 1
or if it's not root:
/dev/sda1 /media/sda1 ext3 defaults 0 0

A typical line in /boot/grub/menu.lst is:
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.20-16-generic root=UUID=7a212543-83c0-43db-a7f3-f631de4a79a3 ro single

A cleansed line is here:
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.20-15-generic root=/dev/hda1 ro single

Oh, and every kernel update recreates the UUID's in /boot/grub/menu.lst...... sad

Hope this helps.

Greetz, Pjotr.
0 Votes
+ -
Strange problem to have
Freebird54 2nd Jul 2007
being as the purpose of UUID's is to PREVENT this sort of thing. When you change the partition setup 'behind the back' of the OS, you can get the identifiers such as hda1 and sda3 to change, but the UUID's should NOT change, so that things still get found correctly. Anyway - regenerating the UUID's is pretty trivial if you do run into a problem.. happy

OH - and this is for Chris. You say that Windows neither tries nor can do the separation of user data by partition... not strictly correct. They HAVE made it a PITA job, but it can be done - by assigning the Documents and Settings folder to a separate partition. It does NOT suggest it, nor make it easy - nor even follow its own rules on this - but it can be FORCED to comply with your wishes!

Of course, this matters less and less as Windows gets used less and less here..... I have to force myself to remember to boot it up and let it update itself and its virus sigs once a month or so - in case I need it for something happy
0 Votes
+ -
so things didnt go so well?
zigip 2nd Jul 2007
You wrote at the end:
"I?m off to finish restoring all of my backups to my freshly repartitioned laptop."
Why? did you not use the right tools for the partitioning, or did the repartitioning bomb?

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