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+
+ <sect1 id="partition-sizing">
+ <title>Deciding on Debian Partitions and Sizes</title>
+<para>
+
+At a bare minimum, GNU/Linux needs one partition for itself.  You can
+have a single partition containing the entire operating system,
+applications, and your personal files. Most people feel that a
+separate swap partition is also a necessity, although it's not
+strictly true.  <quote>Swap</quote> is scratch space for an operating system,
+which allows the system to use disk storage as <quote>virtual
+memory</quote>. By putting swap on a separate partition, Linux can make much
+more efficient use of it.  It is possible to force Linux to use a
+regular file as swap, but it is not recommended.
+
+</para><para>
+
+Most people choose to give GNU/Linux more than the minimum number of
+partitions, however.  There are two reasons you might want to break up
+the file system into a number of smaller partitions. The first is for
+safety.  If something happens to corrupt the file system, generally
+only one partition is affected. Thus, you only have to replace (from
+the backups you've been carefully keeping) a portion of your
+system. At a bare minimum, you should consider creating what is
+commonly called a <quote>root partition</quote>. This contains the most essential
+components of the system. If any other partitions get corrupted, you
+can still boot into GNU/Linux to fix the system. This can save you the
+trouble of having to reinstall the system from scratch.
+
+</para><para>
+
+The second reason is generally more important in a business setting,
+but it really depends on your use of the machine. For example, a mail
+server getting spammed with e-mail can easily fill a partition. If you
+made <filename>/var/mail</filename> a separate partition on the mail
+server, most of the system will remain working even if you get spammed.
+
+</para><para>
+
+The only real drawback to using more partitions is that it is often
+difficult to know in advance what your needs will be. If you make a
+partition too small then you will either have to reinstall the system
+or you will be constantly moving things around to make room in the
+undersized partition. On the other hand, if you make the partition too
+big, you will be wasting space that could be used elsewhere. Disk
+space is cheap nowadays, but why throw your money away?
+
+</para>
+ </sect1>