I was going to do a really long writeup of this, but after some time (A couple days of mulling and revisions, in fact) and seeing I was going to just repeat the same crap, I might as wall cat what I was going to say to the basic point I was going to make. I've seen far too many people not embrace the use of partitions when keeping your stuff in a separate part of your system media, or on a separate media altogether saves a watershed of headache.
It's not rocket science. Just understand which partitions you can do symbolic links with if you want to do things the way I prefer or learn about xdg-update-user-dirs to redefine where stuff normally in the home folder goes and figure out workarounds for consequences when programs expecting directories to be in /home don't exist. That might be the only hard part about using a separate partition for your stuff.
Otherwise I've waxed enough about this. Some of my information is inaccurate, i.e. mentioning sub-optimal uses of the extended partition which allows for practically infinite partitions to be made above the three other physical parts you get to make, but most of it is spot-on and sound for dual-booters to utilize.
Here's a bit from what I was previously staging for commit which should really bring home the purpose of partitions;
###Comprehension through metaphors
Partitioning, in its most basic form are virtual containers for your data. Much like how directories are containers for directories and files, partitions are the largest and most significant boxes inside the big box of data your disk represents. Consider this;
If your system media is the house of your data, then partitions are the rooms inside, with containers which hold folders that have other folders and papers inside.
Most people who use computers (from what I had seen) don't quite understand this. Rather than a well-built house, people would rather keep their data in a studio apartment out of sheer laziness. You have a bedroom for yourself, why not a bedroom for your data? Disregarding partition-specific features, partitions are rooms for your data. Sometimes you may deal with partitions not related with your system media; transport mediums, garages, sheds and space you rent but ultimately it has to go into a partition, for data not in a room you have access to is data you cannot use.
I know I would like to see more discussion about partitions. I thought I understood partitions until the time I restored my system from an image backup, and although all my files were there, the system did not boot. Although I successfully repaired my GRUB and repaired my system, I still am somewhat confused on locations of GRUB, MBR, GPT or boot sector locations/interactions. So maybe a little off from the partitioning discussion above, I for one would like to see the partitioning discussion continue.
The boot sector is the first 512 bytes of your hard disk. ms-sys can handle this, or you can dd the first 512 bytes onto any media to duplicate the MBR of an msdos-formatted disk.
GPT and EFI are fuzzy subject for me as well; I would like something simple-stupid and equally as concise as an in-depth explanation about that. SecureBoot is also a consideration when talking about EFI, since Intel and Microsoft are a little more than sleeping buddies, and thus were able to convince the hardware industry wholesale the importance of Microsoft’s mandate of including support for their new key-based system authentication functionality.
This book has saved me time and time again. It’s short enough that you can read it from cover to cover (before you start working with your partitions…)
