How to migrate XP, Vista, Linux, BSD and Solaris to a bigger hard disk

[saikee]

The size of a Linux partition depends on how you use it.

If you download a lot of Internet data then your /home directory will be huge. However if you move the data regularly to a neutral partition that can be mounted in different OSes then your Linux partition can be a lot smaller.

I would say a 10Gb partition is big enough to hold 99% of the Linux which is about 2.5 to 3.5Gb large when first installed. Some Linux users, me included, like to keep useful data in a personal partition that will be safe from the failure of a operating system. This makes backing up data smaller and easier because I don't need to back up the operating system.

In your case I would recommend varying the sda1 to test Gparted ability to resize the partition. Any thing larger than 20Gb for a Linux is hard to maintain as you will not know which data is yours and which are system-related.

There is no standard usage of a hard disk. You should just try different combinations and find one that has the best appeal to you, while in the process learn the various tasks you can do in Linux.

You need to resize sda1 so that you can be sure yourself that you are indeed using the Linux from the disk sda and not from disk sdb.