Fedora 7 install: DISK failure consideration

[Jim Cornette]

Sebastian Gurovich wrote:
> I have a hard disk with a WinXP NTFS physical partition and wish to add 
> Fedora 7 to have a dual boot system
> but am not sure what to do for partitioning.
> Thinking of 6 partitions in total.
> 
> (1) NTFS for windows
> (2) "/boot" for boot loader
> (3) "/home"
> (4) "/"
> (5) swap
> (6) /tmp
> 
> One option, AFAIK is to create at least 2 EXT3 partitions. One for the 
> /boot and the other for the rest. Then
> using LVM I could create logical partitions (volumes) for "/home",  "/" 
> and "/tmp", BUT, I know the disk will have problems in the future due to 
> age, wear and accidental bumps etc. I am going to take backups but the 
> question is: am I better off first to create many different physical 
> partitions for the F7 installation or should I just create two physical 
> partitions and use LVM to create many logical volumes out of the one 
> physical volume?
> 
> That is,
> 
> Should I create 2 physical partitions with Partition Magic, for (1) and 
> for (2),(3),(4),(5) and then use LVM for (2),(3),(4),(5)
> 
> (1) \boot
> (2) logVol00 ("/home")
> (3) logVol01 ("/")
> (4) logVol02 (swap)
> (5) logVol03 ("/tmp")
> 
> OR
> 
> Should I FIRST create five PHYSICAL partitions with Partition Magic 
> (both primary and extended) and then use LVM to end up with :
> 
> (1) \boot
> (2) logVol00 (/home)
> (3) logVol01 (/)
> (4) logVol02 (swap)
> (5) logVol03 (/tmp)


You could use lghome, lgroot, lgswap and lgtmp so i is easier to recall 
what volume is for what usage.

> 
> If i go with the 2nd option and leave extra free space in 
> logVol00,logVol01 and logVol03  can I later take space from "/home ",  
> /"tmp" or swap and  redistribute it to "/" and vice-versa using LVM?
> 
> Maybe I can´t create 5 physical partitions and Partition Magics extended 
> partition scheme is like LVM´s logical partition scheme and so the end 
> result is similar or am I missing something here?
> 

I am now a huge fan of individual partitions. I used to have a partition 
for XP, /boot, /home and then / and swap within an lvm. I lost the lvm 
and partitions within the extended partition 4 of my first hard disk.

Since there are only 4 primary partitions and the partition on the end 
of the disk will most likely be an extended partition containing all of 
your 5th and above partitions. All is gone anyway if you lost your 
extended partition or had a failure because of disk geometry between 
revisions.

I would go XP=partition1, /boot=partition2, /home=partition3 and put the 
last partition as extended with regular partitions vs. LVM. But of 
course you could do the lvm with seperate volumes all on the 4th 
partition and that would allow you to resize as needs changed.

I hope this gives you some ideas as to the best concept to use.

Jim