Partitioning an External Hard Drive

[Oldun]

I have acquired an external Hard drive but am now having my usual dither over the best way to partition it .Basically I am thinking along the lines one partition with Fat32 and one with Ext3. should I also have a patition for / Home .and one for NTFS.
I am thinking of keeping all Linux files on one part.
So..How would you do it bearing in mind I have a Dual Boot XP and Ubuntu ?
cheers for your comments .
oldun

[Gina]

I think it depends on what you want to use it for. I have 80GB and 320GB USB drives both still formatted FAT32 as when bought - but I only use them for backing up. They are not partitioned - I just use separate folders.

I don't know if that's any help without knowing what yoy want to do with it.

[Oldun]

Well I have finally today become a triple booter .With XP , Dapper .and Feisty Fawn .It was not without problems .The Installation CD kept reading my whole drive as unallocated it could not see Windows or Dapper .tried alsorts with Acronis Partition Expert which could see them both pluse the free partition for Feisty .But no, not the installation CD so off to Gparted Forum to learnt that the reason was Dapper on an Ext 3 partition .So downloaded and burnt Gparted ISO and got it sorted by halving the Dapper partition . Installation then went ahead no problem.

[Gina]

Strange! Still, you sorted it out :):) Great stuff :) Well done :):)

I've just installed a new HD on my old desktop - replacing the original 8GB drive as hda. Now in the process of installing Feisty on it. It'll be interesting to see if it finds Dapper on the 10GB drive without any previous boot info :lol

[Gina]

Yes, it did find Dapper :):) New HD has improved the speed nicely :)

[Oldun]

I am extremely disappointed with feisty Fawn it keeps Hanging (or freezing whichever) looking in the ubuntu forum there are lots of people with the same problem but it appears to be from several different causes . As Dapper works perfectly for me .I will stick with it for the time being and try and find a solution to feisty . It seems to me that an addition to the kernal is what most people are recommending .It could a lenghty process of elimination .:eek:

[Gina]

Yes, if you're having problems with Feisty, stick with Dapper if that's solid.

I have a couple of problems with Feisty. On my old desktop, the wireless card interface needs down-ing, iwconfig used to set essid, and then up-ing to get the wireless working. This needs doing at every startup - I'm going to write a script to handle it. This is a known bug and on the schedule for fixing.

The other thing is I'm having a problem with is my printer - works fine in Dapper but in Feisty, when I try to print it feeds sheets of blank paper continuously until switched off - nothing printed. So I keep Dapper (in multi-boot) for printing.

In many ways Feisty is better but there are a few problems they need to fix. I get occasional freezing and also failure to shut down properly on my desktop PCs. It works fine on the laptop. Dapper does seem more solid and dependable. I may go back to Dapper myself - I'm using a common /home partition so settings and data aren't a problem :)