I have Windows running on two partitions of my computer. I am now planning to install crunchbang on the left space. Hence I have one primary and two logical partitions left if I want to have root, home and swap. I would think I'd place the extended partition at the end. But which partition is more important to be primary? Root or home? My guess would be:
/ --> primary
/home --> logical
swap --> logical
Or completely different?
Thanks a lot!
There should be no difference, AFAIK. If it helps you, my current HDD layout looks very similar to yours, and in my case I indeed have / as the primary partition and /home and swap as logical partitions within the extended partition. It looks like this:
$ sudo fdisk -l /dev/sda
Disk /dev/sda: 232.9 GiB, 250059350016 bytes, 488397168 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disklabel type: dos
Disk identifier: 0x52305230
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 208896 82223103 41007104 7 HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
/dev/sda2 * 82223104 205697023 61736960 83 Linux
/dev/sda3 205697024 488396799 141349888 5 Extended
/dev/sda5 205699072 480008191 137154560 83 Linux
/dev/sda6 480010240 488396799 4193280 82 Linux swap / Solaris
$ lsblk
NAME MAJ:MIN RM SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINT
sda 8:0 0 232.9G 0 disk
├─sda1 8:1 0 39.1G 0 part /mnt/win
├─sda2 8:2 0 58.9G 0 part /
├─sda3 8:3 0 1K 0 part
├─sda5 8:5 0 130.8G 0 part /home
└─sda6 8:6 0 4G 0 part [SWAP]
NOTE: You may have noticed that I'm only using three primary partitions (Win, root and extended) instead of four; that's because there's another very small (100 MiB) hidden primary partition at the beginning of the disk that doesn't show there. Just testing stuff, I'll get rid of it next time I format the box, but it doesn't invalidate my point.
fdisk output clearly indicates you're using three primary partitions, period. (One of those, /dev/sda3, is your extended partition.) The "very small... hidden primary partition" isn't a partition; it's unpartitioned space. That said, you're right that the choice of primary vs. logical partitions won't have any performance implications.
Feb 22, 2014 at 1:38
You seem to misunderstand primary, extended, and logical partitions. An MBR disk supports up to four primary partitions. As that's limiting, one of these partitions may be configured as an extended partition, which can hold an arbitrarily large number of logical partitions. Thus, your belief that you have "...two logical partitions left..." is in error; if you've got unused space within your extended partition, you can create as many logical partitions as will fit in your unused space.
Before you start planning this out, though, be aware that MBR is on the way out. If your computer came with OS X or Windows 8 pre-installed, and perhaps if it came with Windows 7 from the last year or so of its reign, your computer probably boots with an EFI instead of a BIOS and uses GPT rather than MBR partitions. GPT doesn't distinguish between primary, extended, and logical partitions, and GPT supports up to 128 partitions by default. Thus, if you're using a recent computer, you might not need to worry about this ancient distinction. In fact, it's possible to use GPT on even older computers, but the advantages of doing so are slim.
As to a /home partition, that's a matter of opinion. Mine is that /home partitions are advisable on any but the smallest installations, because they help isolate user data from system data. This can simplify certain types of upgrades and system backups
