I recently installed CachyOS on a 1 TB hard drive and decided to keep it as my main operating system. The drive currently has a 200 GB system partition plus separate partitions for games and personal files such as downloads, movies, and pictures. I no longer need the old contents and want to reformat those two partitions.
I use Limine and Btrfs for the system, so should the games and storage partitions also use Btrfs, or would another filesystem such as ext4 be better? I would also like them to appear conveniently in Dolphin under names like "Games" and "Storage," similar to the standard folders. Can I safely prepare and format them using GParted, and what precautions should I take?
3 Answers
If you no longer need the old files, GParted can either reformat those existing partitions or delete them and leave the space unallocated. You can then create new partitions and choose ext4 or Btrfs as needed. The filesystem choice is independent of Limine; Limine only handles booting. Mounting and permissions are separate steps, so make sure your user owns the directories if you want normal read/write access.
You can format the partitions with GParted, but first double-check the device and partition names and make a backup of anything important. Formatting destroys the existing files. Afterward, create filesystem labels such as “Games” and “Storage,” then mount them wherever you want, either through your desktop’s disk utility or with /etc/fstab. Dolphin should then show the mounted volumes, and you can also add shortcuts to their mount points in the Places sidebar.
They do not need to use Btrfs just because your system does. Ext4 is a straightforward choice for a games partition, while Btrfs can be useful for general data if you want features such as snapshots. For frequently changing data like games or virtual machines, Btrfs copy-on-write can sometimes be undesirable unless configured appropriately, so ext4 is often simpler.
Thanks, that explains the mounting and Dolphin part. I’ll make sure to verify the partitions and back up anything important before formatting them.