PCLOS partition questions & more.

[zapjb]

I'm dual booting PCLOS-2007 & XP corp on a 160GB HDD. Posted on the PCLOS forum as well.

When I installed PCLOS it gave me partition options. I chose pretty much default settings. So I ended up with 4 partitions. 1 is XP & 3 are PCLOS. 1 is swap, ok I get that. The other 2 are listed as linux partitions viewing them from XP. Why are there 2?

And in PCLOS i only see 3 partitions. No swap.
Of the 3: One is 11GB consisting of 2 files, username & lost + found. Used is 348.5MB & usage is 3%.
The other is 8.4GB consisting of 18 files, 1 log & 1 txt. Used is 2.9GB & usage is 37%.
3rd is XP.

I'm not explaining this well, sorry. I can't even spit out a question.

I just don't get those 2 linux partitions. Particularly the 11GB one. What the heck is lost + found? Can I consolidate the 11GB & 8.4GB partitions? Do I need the swap partition? I have 1GB of RAM. Etc.

[Mrkvonic]

Hello,

The simplest way of making partitions in Linux:
swap + root + home

Just like separating user from system in terms of permissions, you also get to physically separate user files from the system files. This is a very sensible thing. This way, if you reinstall your OS, you do not lose user data.

Just like making C: and D: in Windows.

In PCLinuxOS, you do not see the swap partition normally because it is not usable. But you can see it's there:

fdisk -l

Once you list all your partitions, you will also know exactly what the first and the second partition are, although from your explanation, it seems that the first one is home and the second root.

BTW, you could have read one of my tutorials, you would see that I always make separation between root and home and that I manually partition.

lost + found should not worry you. I would keep the partitions separate.

Swap partitions are small and should not bother you. It's much like pagefile in Windows. Do you need one in Windows?

Mrk

[zapjb]

Thanks.

And I got thesame from PCLOS forum.
-{ Quote: "...I was going to say:

It's normal...You are seeing a swap, a root, a home partition (all linux) and your windows partition....from windows.

With linux you will see all the partitions except the swap one.


If you think about it, linux has this nailed. If you break your root partition, then all you have to do is reinstall and not format your home partition...Takes say 6 mins and you haven't lost any data. Swap is like extra ram but on your hard drive. Also every linux system you run will find and use it.

It's all good.

Oh lost and found will be empty all the time, it's just a place that linux will dump files if your pc crashes...." }-

[Mrkvonic]

Are you sure it wasn't me who answered on PCLinuxOS forums??
Just joking, it wasn't me.
Mrk