System (~10 GB) - System directories and Applications directory.
Swap (~5 GB) - System swap file.
Backup (~5 GB) - For backing up critical files.
Media (~25 GB) - For music, movies and pr0n.
Homes (~15 GB) - User home folders.
Scratch (~15 GB) - For large media files and downloads.
Miscellaneous (~10 GB) - For any test installs I wish to conduct, or other miscellaneous storage purposes.
What are the advantages of this setup?
- Storing the swap file apart from the system files ensures that the swap files won't fragment because of system upgrades or applications reads/writes.
- Putting the swap file on a large partition ensures that the swap files won't fragment and begin overwriting in memory intensive situations and reduce pageouts.
- Storing the user homes on a separate partition makes it trivial to back up personal settings and preferences. It also ensures that, if an OS upgrade goes bad, my personal settings will remain intact.
- The Scratch partition houses my desktop and my archived Photoshop work. Instead of having my desktop reside on the same partition as my Home, I create a symlink to a directory on Scratch called "Desktop," so that becomes my download directory (I download all my files to my desktop). Given that internet downloads involve expanding and then deleting compressed files and the volume of files I download, it's ideal to localize all the fragmentation to that one partition.
- Replacing my Home's "Movies" and "Music" directories with symlinks to mirror ones on the Media partition assures that, if my Home goes, my media stays where it is.
- The Miscellaneous partition allows me to conduct experiments (like installing developer previews of a certain OS with a cat motif) without risking harm to the rest of my system. When I'm not conducting said experiments, it can serve as a Maintenance partition to boot from if my main system disk gets fskced.
