Planning is needed when choosing a partitioning scheme and a tool to create such partitions on a hard drive disk.

Windows Partitions

• Manipulating Windows partitions requires special consideration and tools. See How to Resize Windows Partitions for more information. In general, use Windows tools when manipulating existing Windows partitions.

• Format Windows partitions using the NTFS filesystem, in general. However, Windows 98 requires FAT32, and Windows XP will function fine with FAT32. The NTFS filesystem allows greater security (and ability to lock folders), which can be an advantage or disadvantage, depending on your point of view. (Microsoft can administratively lock your folders without your permission in NTFS). Windows Vista and Windows 7 require NTFS.

In general, it is desirable to use Windows tools when formatting Windows partitions, but most current partition managers (such as GParted are able to specify the filesystem (NTFS or FAT32) correctly.

Linux and Mac partitions

• Most current partition managers (such as GParted) are able to format or reformat any partition to the desired filesystem type (ext3, ext4, swap, hfs+ for Mac OS X, NTFS or FAT32 for Windows). In general, Linux partitions should be ext3 or ext4, but FAT32 and several other options are available as Linux filesystem types.

Install Windows in the first partition

• If Windows exists or will exist on your system, it must occupy the first primary partition. This is necessary because the Windows bootloader is not very capable and always looks for the Windows OS in the first partition. For more information on installing Windows and Ubuntu in separate partitions, see Dual Booting Windows and Ubuntu.

Why use multiple partitions?

• The main reason to use separate partitions is for ease of maintenance. When an operating system (OS) occupies its own partition, it can easily be updated without affecting the operating systems or data stored on other partitions.

This is equally true when certain applications are able to be used by multiple operating systems at once. A groupware application (such as Kolab), for example, can be placed in its own partition and be used by whichever operating system is booted. It can stay consistent even when one or more operating systems are updated. It can itself then be updated independently of any operating system updates and excluded from "automatic updates" of certain operating systems.

• When an operating system loads from its own partition, it always runs the fastest. When other alternatives are used, such as running one operating system from within another OS (by a virtual machine or virtual disk mechanism), it is always slower (due to higher RAM and hard-drive requirements when using these methods).
• Bootloaders such as GRUB can be used to choose which operating system to load when each operating system occupies its own partition.

== Arguments against partitioning ==

• 'Data loss is less frequent with current operating systems.' -- If you believe this one, I have a bridge to sell you.

• 'The need to run multi-boot systems is mitigated due to the advent of virtualization and virtualization tools like VirtualBox such that running a virtual Windows OS on an Ubuntu system is mostly a breeze.' -- It's not. I've tried it. It runs very slowly on all but the most powerful computers with lots of RAM.

• 'Partitioning to create swap space is unnecessary since systems are much faster than before, Linux runs more efficiently, and RAM is quite cheap.' -- RAM may be cheap, but not all computer motherboards can expand their RAM capabilities (and therefore still need swap). Further, Linux systems require more RAM these days, not less. Also, it is not the OS that requires plenty of memory, it is the programs that run within the OS that requires memory.

Choosing a filesystem for a data partition

If you need a 'universally writable' drive so that Win, Mac, and *nix operating systmes can share files, consider these issues:

• NTFS is a consideration, but it is proprietary and Window's peculiar usage of these drives means that Linux doesn't quite work perfectly with it. Further, Microsoft has the capability (and sometimes does) remotely lock NTFS folders. Do you want to take that chance?
• FAT32 was hisotrically a good choice, but its size limitation (32 GB max) makes it quite small for today's standards.
• The exfat file system has no size limitation, but it is not commonly used.