What is the best way for me to partition my new laptop's SSD and HDD?

[Nick Powell]

I've recently bought a laptop with a 250GB SSD and a 500GB HDD, and it is arriving with no operating system installed. I want to run both Ubuntu and Windows 7 on the machine, with Windows mainly being used for gaming (steam) and Adobe Creative Suite work, while I'll use mainly Ubuntu for coding/writing work.

I'm constantly second guessing myself as to how I should partition the SSD to dual boot both of these operating systems. Can anyone recommend how many GB I should allocate and in how many partitions? Any advice would be greatly appreciated!

 

[cilliers]

It is a pretty easy calculation:
1. Add the GB you need for ubuntu (5GB) to the GB you need for all your ubuntu apps.
2. Add the GB you need for windows 7 (17GB) to the GB you need for all your Windows 7 apps.

My initial educated guess is that you will partition your SSD 1:3 (ubuntu:windows7).
In other words, 84GB for ubuntu partition and 166GB for windows 7.
But then again, it depends on how many applications you will install on each.
You say that ubuntu will only be used for coding/writing, so in retrospect, you might only need a 30GB partition for Ubuntu.
Then assign the remaining 220GB to windows 7 for games and such.

 

[Nick Powell]

It is a pretty easy calculation:
1. Add the GB you need for ubuntu (5GB) to the GB you need for all your ubuntu apps.
2. Add the GB you need for windows 7 (17GB) to the GB you need for all your Windows 7 apps.

My initial educated guess is that you will partition your SSD 1:3 (ubuntu:windows7).
In other words, 84GB for ubuntu partition and 166GB for windows 7.
But then again, it depends on how many applications you will install on each.
You say that ubuntu will only be used for coding/writing, so in retrospect, you might only need a 30GB partition for Ubuntu.
Then assign the remaining 220GB to windows 7 for games and such.

I've read in a few forums that some space on the SSD should always be left free and never be used (an amount like 10-30gb), do you think that I should do this?

 

[Dark Lord of Tech]

Yes , a raw partition can help on an SSD , but not really needed.

 

[cilliers]

It is a pretty easy calculation:
1. Add the GB you need for ubuntu (5GB) to the GB you need for all your ubuntu apps.
2. Add the GB you need for windows 7 (17GB) to the GB you need for all your Windows 7 apps.

My initial educated guess is that you will partition your SSD 1:3 (ubuntu:windows7).
In other words, 84GB for ubuntu partition and 166GB for windows 7.
But then again, it depends on how many applications you will install on each.
You say that ubuntu will only be used for coding/writing, so in retrospect, you might only need a 30GB partition for Ubuntu.
Then assign the remaining 220GB to windows 7 for games and such.

I've read in a few forums that some space on the SSD should always be left free and never be used (an amount like 10-30gb), do you think that I should do this?

I've read that HDD's provide faster speeds when partitions are created at the beginning of the drive, due to the inner linear radius speeds on the platter being higher than the outer linear speed. However, I've not ever seen any empirical proof that the partitioning strategy for and SSD affects the speed, be it randomly or sequentially measured.